Attackers Vandalize 2 Russian Synagogues
Pastor Dale Morgan
Attackers Vandalize 2 Russian Synagogues*
By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV
The Associated Press
Friday, September 22, 2006; 7:30 AM
MOSCOW -- Two synagogues were vandalized in attacks nearly at the start
of the Jewish New Year Friday, highlighting rising xenophobia and
anti-Semitism in Russia. No one was reported injured.
"If those who attacked the synagogues expected to scare Jews on those
holy days, they have been mistaken," Russia's chief rabbi Berel Lazar
said in a statement released by his office.
Unknown assailants threw a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue in the Volga
River city of Astrakhan in southern Russia, setting its door ablaze. A
guard at the building quickly put down the fire, the ITAR-Tass news
agency quoted a district prosecutor Sergei Knizhnikov as saying.
A spokesman for the city police confirmed that the synagogue had been
vandalized, saying that no one was hurt and refusing to give further
details.
In a pre-dawn attack on the synagogue in Khabarovsk, a city of 580,000
on the border with China, attackers shattered windows in the empty
building, the regional department of the Interior Ministry said. A
criminal investigation was launched into the attack.
Last summer, unidentified attackers spilled gasoline at the same
synagogue's entrance and set it on fire. No one was hurt in that
incident and there was no damage to the building. Police have failed to
track down the perpetrators, the Interior Ministry's regional department
said.
Russia has seen a marked rise in xenophobia and hate crimes in recent
years that rights groups say is fueled in part by the authorities'
reluctance to crack down on hate crimes and tackle growing nationalism.
In an apparent response to such criticism, a man who burst into a Moscow
synagogue last January and stabbed nine people with a hunting knife was
sentenced to 16 years in prison last week.
Alexander Brod, head of Moscow Bureau for Human Rights which monitors
xenophobia and extremist groups, said that nationalist groups could have
launched Friday's attacks to avenge Alexander Koptsev's conviction.
"Radical nationalist circles were pained by the severe sentence handed
down to Alexander Koptsev," he said, according to the Interfax news
agency. "The attacks on synagogues in Astrakhan and Khabarovsk are a
response to this just sentence."