Jewish dance troupe forced off stage in Germany....

This is absolutely shameful...

Members of a Jewish dance troupe were pelted with stones and insulted during a neighborhood festival in Sahlkamp, Hannover (Germany).

Politicians and local associations responded in outrage and disbelief to the antisemitic attacks in Sahlkamp. A dance troupe of the Liberal Jewish Community in Hannover was pelted with stones and insulted on Saturday during a district festival. After correlating pictures, 30 children and teenagers of mostly Lebanese, Palestinian, Iraqi, Iranian and possibly also Turkish origin, were involved in throwing pebbles and calling insults at the eight adult dancers. The Jewish folklore group were forced to leave the stage, one dancer was hit in the leg and suffered a bruise. The international cultural festival continued after a break, the police were not notified.

The stones apparently came from a large pile of larger and smaller pebbles, which was still around Tuesday at the edge of the Sahlkamp market. There are conflicting reports about the exact chain of events. It appears that the provocation began immediately when the group got on the stage. A young person with a megaphone shouted "Jews, out", another threw the first pebble. While the audience rebuked those disturbing, more young people aged 12-16, all together half a dozen, got up and also started throwing stones. Later, around 20 children, boys and girls, joined in. The situation calmed several minutes after the dancers left the stage, and social workers called for restraint.

Some observers said Tuesday that they suspected the action might possibly have been prepared in advance, since some of the youth already had the pebbles in their pockets. "Certainly pebbles don't just lie around in the market," says eyewitness Tatiana Ilchenko, who was also in the culture festival with a folklore group. Other observers, however, said there was a spontaneous escalation. The highly excitable youth responded aggressively to the calls to order and the initial response of the audience. The youth with the megaphone, the first to shout antisemitic slogans, was mentally disabled, they say. It is widely accepted that antisemitism is widespread among the Palestinian and Arab youth of the neighborhood. 'Jew' is an insult, says an expert on the neighborhood.