Jewish leader Schuster: Islamists hate Jews and Western values

The alleged anti-Semitic attack on a tourist in Berlin reveals an often misunderstood ideological world of the perpetrator, the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany said on Saturday.

"Contempt for the memory of the Shoah and hatred of Jews go hand in hand with the fundamental denial of our Western values and are often the ideological core of Islamists," Josef Schuster, the president of the organization, said.

He called the attack a terrible act.

On Friday evening, a 19-year-old Syrian man who had been granted asylum had reportedly attacked a Spanish visitor to the Holocaust Memorial with a knife from behind, leaving him in a critical condition. The tourist is 30 years old.

The attacker's aim was to kill Jews and that's why he chose the Holocaust Memorial as his location, the public prosecutor said.

According to the public prosecutor, the attacker's aim was to kill Jews. The location was also chosen with this in mind.