Posted on 10/13/23
| News Source: Associated Press
A 50-year-old Israeli man who works at the Israeli Embassy in Beijing was stabbed Friday in front of a supermarket, Chinese police and the Israeli government said.
Beijing police said they had arrested a suspect, a 53-year-old foreign man. They described the victim as a family member of an Israeli diplomat. No motive was given for the attack, and it was unclear if it was connected to the war between Israel and the militant group Hamas.
“The employee was transferred to hospital and he is in a stable condition,” an Israeli government statement said, without giving additional details.
A video posted on social media showed a man with a knife grappling with another man on the ground and stabbing him several times, leaving a trail of blood stains on the sidewalk.
People working in the area said they heard the victim shouting as police cars and an ambulance arrived. A police cordon was set up and the blood later washed away.
The stabbing occurred as Muslims across the world took to the streets in large protests after Friday prayers over Israel’s intense bombing campaign in Gaza, following the unprecedented and deadly incursion by the militant group Hamas into southern Israel last Saturday.
Also Friday, Israel sharply criticized China’s statement about the initial Hamas attack. Israel’s Foreign Ministry said Ambassador Rafi Harpaz had expressed his country’s “deep disappointment” to China’s envoy for the Middle East, Zhai Jun. The two diplomats talked by phone on Thursday.
There was “no clear and unequivocal condemnation of the terrible massacre committed by the terrorist organization Hamas against innocent civilians and the abduction of dozens of them to Gaza,” the Israeli statement said. “The Chinese announcements do not contain any element of Israel’s right to defend itself and its citizens, a fundamental right of any sovereign country that was attacked in an unprecedented manner and with cruelty that has no place in human society.”