Alleged anti-Semitic attack victim flown to Israel

Yeshiva student who was seriously hurt in an alleged anti-Semitic attack in Ukraine is brought to Israel to receive treatment for his wounds.

By GIL STERN STERN SHEFLER
Aharon Alexander Gorshonov in hosptial 370 (photo credit: Courtesy)
Aharon Alexander Gorshonov in hosptial 370
(photo credit: Courtesy)
The victim of an alleged anti-Semitic attack that took place in Ukraine last week was flown to Israel on Tuesday to receive treatment for his wounds.
Community members identified Aharon Alexander Gorshonov, a 25-yearold yeshiva student, at a hospital in Kiev last Monday, where he was being treated for serious head wounds some 48 hours after he had disappeared.
“He was last seen leaving the synagogue with a white kippa on his head on the second night of Seder,” said Yaakov Zilberman, a member of the Jewish community and representative of emergency response group Zaka. “When we found him at the hospital, his face was bloodied and his skull shattered.”
Zilberman said Gorshonov went missing in the same area of Kiev where skinheads brutally attacked another member of the local Jewish community seven years ago.
So far, police have not elaborated on the circumstances of the attack, but groups like the European Jewish Congress and members of the community claim he was the victim of a hate crime.
“We are going to meet with the interior minister together with one of our community leaders, [businessman] Alexander Levin, and demand that law authorities take action,” he said.
Zilberman, who is visibly Jewish in his ultra-Orthodox garb, complained that he had regularly been subjected to anti- Semitic taunts and abuse since he moved to Ukraine over a decade ago.