A Chabad soldier serving in the IDF's Identification and Burial Unit described an incident at Big Apple Pizza in Jerusalem in which a secular group allegedly shouted anti-religious insults at a religious family, including calling them 'religious' and telling them to 'get out.' The soldier said the mother left in tears, the father was visibly shaken, and that he had never witnessed such hatred in his years abroad.
The account, posted on social media and addressed to journalist Yinon Magal, was written by a soldier who said he was on leave after a memorial service for a fallen soldier from Operation Protective Edge. He described sitting with his family at Big Apple Pizza when a secular group of five to six people in their 50s–60s began yelling at a religious young couple with small children, accusing them of being noisy and then launching into a tirade of anti-religious slurs. The soldier said the incident lasted about five minutes and left the religious mother crying and the father red-faced and struggling to remain calm. He added that his own wife, an immigrant, also broke down in tears. The soldier contrasted the experience with his time in New York and France, where he said he never encountered such antisemitism, calling the event 'pure auto-antisemitism.' The Zioneer has not independently verified the report, and the individuals involved have not been identified.
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