After a protesters kicked the visibly Jewish American, police said he must come with them to the station on Shabbat
(Aug. 11, 2025 / JNS) Shmuley Boteach, a prominent Orthodox rabbi from the United States, said that police in Vienna, Austria, briefly detained him and treated him as a suspect on Friday after anti-Israel protesters assaulted him on the street.
Officers led Boteach to a police station under threat of being arrested and taken there by force, even after two American tourists, one of them a retired police officer from California, told the Austrian officers that Boteach was the victim in the situation and that they had video to prove it, Boteach told JNS.
He added that anti-Israel protesters targeted him, likely because he wears a kippah, even though he did not provoke them as they were protesting in central Vienna, where he was with his wife, Debbie, for research on a book about the Holocaust.