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On the finish of the day’s trial, Lahav Shapira stands out of doors the district court docket in Berlin, surrounded by way of his brother Shahak, buddies and Jewish scholars, some dressed in a Famous person of David and a yarmulke. A couple of meters away, a number of pro-Palestinian activists are demonstrating, some dressed in keffiyehs and Palestinian flags, chanting: “Free Palestine!” On one facet are the Jews, reverse them others, and the police in between. That is the picture that continues to be.
Lahav Shapira, 32, narrow with brown curly hair, by no means concept he would at some point change into the face of this struggle. “I never wanted to be an activist against anti-Semitism,” he says. However now he’s concerned as a sufferer in two prison circumstances and is being sued in every other case prior to an administrative court docket: That day a case of coercion used to be heard as a result of a pro-Palestinian activist didn’t need to let him into the college corridor. There may be an administrative dispute towards the Loose College of Berlin, the place Shapira research; Shahav accuses the college of insufficiently protective its Jewish scholars from anti-Semitism. And there’s a 3rd one for severe physically accidents; Shapira used to be overwhelmed virtually to demise in Berlin. {A photograph} of his bruised and swollen face from the health facility, launched after the assault, acts as an emblem of what could also be going down to Jews in Germany presently. However Shapira does now not need to be an emblem of weak point: within the image, he displays his prolonged heart finger to the digicam.
