Antisemitism or the daily life of a Jewish restaurateur in Berlin

"Return to your gas chambers!", a man shouted at Yorai Feinberg in front of his restaurant in Berlin in December 2017. Surprised, he posted a video of the incident on social networks. Since then he has been harbaded by anti-Semites of all stripes.

"There are people who are obsessed with me"The 37-year-old Israeli, who is showing on his laptop the last thing that happened to him that morning, said with a bitter smile: about 65 pages of insults sent by a usual" customer ", some Lutz F.

It's always the same thing. "Start by denying the holocaust, then there are the hate statements of Israel, then the insults of the Nazi era", as "dirty Jew", "bading Jew". And, he says, there are "very unpleasant death threats", in one of the big letters: "I am going to kill you".

Yorai Feinberg has been leading a Middle Eastern cuisine restaurant in the district for six years. Schöneberg, a few steps from the famous Kurfürstendamm.

It serves hummus, falafel or various kosher dishes, in a cozy atmosphere, with walls adorned with paintings adorned with the star of David. In the window is a menorah, the seven-branched candelabrum in Hebrew.

The incidents started soon. First stickers calling for boycott of Israel, then insults by phone or email.

But the attacks took another dimension after the broadcast on social networks of the video filmed by a friend in December 2017.

It shows a fifty-year-old German attacking the restorer: "You have nothing to do here!", "Go back to your gas chambers!"

"The video went viral and I gave interviews," said the victim. "My activism has increased"and at the same time, the attacks" got worse in an extreme way ".

Harbadment is regular, on average once a week. "They are unfortunately very creative," he sighs.

Beyond insults, there are also attempts to damage your restaurant by negative reviews on the network. Other people went directly into the institution and insulted their staff.

"There was a more serious story when three teenagers threw big firecrackers on customers (…) and caused panic", before escaping.

His attackers are mostly of Muslim origin, he says, often immigrants, with more than one million asylum seekers having arrived in Germany between 2015 and 2016. The others come from both sides, to the right and to the left.

In total, Yorai Feinberg filed 20 complaints.

Until now, only the aggressor of the video was sentenced to a suspended prison sentence of seven months. Another must be judged soon.

More and more people are posting their hostile opinions on their Facebook page, under their true identity, says Yorai Feinberg.

"It's absurd, many do not fear the consequences," he laments, saying he is abandoned by the authorities.

And this despite the fact that Berlin has appointed in late 2018 a prosecutor, Claudia Vanoni, specifically responsible for the fight against the increase of acts of anti-Semitism in the capital.

"For the moment, it really had no effect," says the restaurateur.

In a recent interview, the prosecutor admitted that 41% of the 440 court cases for antisemitic acts of last year had been dismissed, often, as was the case for Feinberg, for lack of evidence.

However, "I do not want to give up now," he says. His request for greater severity of justice has collected about 50,000 signatures. This encourages him.

"I get a lot more support and love than hatred and aggression," he adds. "I hope that this positive side will become stronger, more and more visible, in Germany, France and Europe."