An Israeli man suspected of shoving a French Catholic nun to the ground and kicking her in Jerusalem has been charged with assault motivated by religious hostility, Israel’s state attorney’s office said yesterday.
The April 28 attack was condemned by Christian clergy in Jerusalem and came amid a rise in harassment of religious officials and pilgrims by religious Jews in the walled Old City, home to sites holy to Christians, Muslims and Jews.
Yonah Shreiber, 36, was arrested a day after the attack.
CCTV footage shows the attacker, wearing a Jewish kippah and ritual tassels, chase the nun from behind before pushing her to the ground.
He then began to kick a passerby who tried to intervene, the footage shows.
The man “was charged with assault causing actual injury motivated by hostility towards the public on the grounds of religion, as well as simple assault,” the state attorney’s office said.
The nun suffered bruises on her face and leg due to the attack, the statement said.
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