Teen Arrested For Threatening Jewish Boy Who Was Forced To Kiss Muslim’s Shoe
Graphic by Angelie Zaslavsky
(JTA) — A teenage boy in Victoria, Australia who allegedly sent threatening messages to a Jewish boy who had been forced to kiss the shoe of a Muslim student and to his mother has been charged for the threats.
The boy, 16, was arrested by Victoria police and charged with stalking, harassing and threatening to kill the Jewish boy and his mother, The Age reported.
The teen, who reportedly was arrested earlier this month will appear next month in Children’s Court, the newspaper said.
The threats were sent after photos of the incident in which a 12-year-old Jewish student was forced in a public park to kneel to kiss the shoes of a Muslim classmate while being threatened by other older schoolboys, were splashed across the front pages of newspapers in Australia and around the world, the Daily Mail reported. The photo was first published by the Australian Jewish News.
Among the messages sent to the 12-year-old boy was one which said he would be slaughtered and asked if he wanted to “talk about suicide.”
The boy was removed from Cheltenham Secondary College in suburban Melbourne and enrolled in a Jewish school.
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.
