Barcelona Rabbi Says No Sign Jews Were Targeted In Van Terror
Image by Getty Images
Barcelona’s chief rabbi said it did not appear Jews were specifically targeted in the van-ramming terror attack that killed at least 13 people.
The attack took place on the famed Rambla avenue near the entrance to Maccabi, a kosher restaurant, CNN reported. But most of the carnage occurred outside the FNAC department store on the same street.
Rabbi Meir Bar-Hen said security forces instructed him to temporarily close Jewish institutions in the city.
Reports stated that local police have arrested one man in connection with the attack. Some reports speculated that the man is Driss Oukabir, a Moroccan citizen who the Spanish-language paper El Pais identified as the person who rented the van.
Avi Mayer, a spokesman for the Jewish Agency for Israel, posted an item from what appears to be Oukabir’s Facebook page showing an anti-Semitic video. Oukabir’s Facebook page has since been taken down.
It’s our birthday and we’re still celebrating!
We hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, we’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s independent Jewish news.
This week we celebrate 129 years of the Forward. We’re proud of our origins as a Yiddish print publication serving Jewish immigrants. And we’re just as proud of what we’ve become today: A trusted source of Jewish news and opinion, available digitally to anyone in the world without paywalls or subscriptions.
We’ve helped five generations of American Jews make sense of the news and the world around them — and we aren’t slowing down any time soon.
As a nonprofit newsroom, reader donations make it possible for us to do this work. Support independent, agenda-free Jewish journalism and our board will match your gift in honor of our birthday!
Support our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.
