Israeli Suffers Broken Leg in Hate Crime Car Attack in Laguna Beach

Israeli-American Roy Gross, 28, suffered a compound fracture of his leg after an assailant, who discovered he was Israeli, tried to run him and his friends over with a car recently in Laguna Beach, California.

Gross is a resident of Huntington Beach, according to a Hebrew-language article at Hebrew News that cites a local police report. According to the article, Gross and his friends were waiting for a taxi outside a club at 2:00 a.m. when two other men approached and asked about their national origin.

After Gross said he was Israeli, one of the suspects in the attack, who said he was Palestinian and Iranian, began hurling abuse.

Gross and his friends tried to enter their taxi, but the suspected assailants allegedly chased it away. One of the assailants then allegedly drove his own vehicle at Gross and his friends three times, hitting one of his friends and fracturing Gross’s leg on the third attempt.

Gross, who came to the U.S. after fulfilling his military service in the Israel Defense Forces (IDF), and who currently works as a music producer, according to the New York Post, said from the hospital that he had tried to calm the situation down before being attacked.

Police arrested one of the alleged assailants and one of Gross’s friends; they let the latter go free and are reportedly investigating the incident as a hate crime.

Last November, a 69-year-old Jewish man was allegedly killed by a pro-Palestinian protester at a rally near Los Angeles when he counter-demonstrated in favor of Israel and was pushed to the ground, causing him to hit is head.

His assailant was later charged with involuntary manslaughter.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News and the host of Breitbart News Sunday on Sirius XM Patriot on Sunday evenings from 7 p.m. to 10 p.m. ET (4 p.m. to 7 p.m. PT). He is the author of The Trumpian Virtues: The Lessons and Legacy of Donald Trump’s Presidency, now available on Audible. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.