‘Child Killers’: Vienna Uber Driver Attacks Jewish Family, Forces Them Out of Vehicle

An Uber driver in Vienna assaulted a Jewish father after hurling verbal abuse at he and his family and forcing them out of the vehicle last week, according to the Jewish Religious Community (IKG), a communal organization for Austria’s Jews.

“In recent weeks, there have been frequent antisemitic incidents involving Uber and airport taxi drivers. These involved people who were identifiable as Jewish due to their clothing, spoke Hebrew or Yiddish, identified themselves as Israeli citizens, or simply mentioned that they had traveled from Israel,” the IKG stated in a Facebook post on Monday.

Describing the incident, the IKG said that an unnamed Jewish couple with children aged 10 and 13 traveled with a 75-year-old woman, intending to ride in an Uber from the airport to a birthday meal at a restaurant.

“When the driver learned en route that some of his passengers were from Israel, he began to verbally abuse them, calling them ‘murderers’ and saying he didn’t want ‘child killers’ in his vehicle,” the IKG recounted. “He pulled over to the side of the road and forced the shocked family to leave the vehicle. He also got out and continued the insults, which ultimately culminated in a physical assault on the father.”

Uber has reportedly suspended the driver, and the family filed a police report. On Tuesday, Chief Rabbi Pinchas Goldschmidt, head of the Conference of European Rabbis, said on X, “Thank you, Uber, for swiftly suspending him and opening an investigation. Decisive action against hate matters.”

Oskar Deutsch, president of the Jewish Community of Vienna, released a statement about the alleged hate crime.

“When a taxi driver learns that his passengers are Jewish and some are from Israel, he calls the five people antisemitic and forces them to get off. The crying of the children is not enough for him. He pushes the father and threatens him with more blows,” Deutsch posted on Facebook. “I thank the team of Antisemitismus-Meldestelle der IKG [the organization’s Antisemitism Reporting Center], who took care of the family, among other things accompanied them to the report to the police and continues to provide comprehensive care.”

Deutsch put the attack in the broader context of hate targeting Jews in Austria, referencing recent antisemitic incidents in the country.

“This antisemitic incident happened last week in Vienna. It’s not enough to condemn antisemitic discrimination, abuse, threats, and physical assault,” he said. “A Salzburg cinema does not want to show a movie about Jewish life in Salzburg, Israeli guests are thrown out of restaurants — we are registering a significant accumulation of such incidents in the past weeks.”

Late last month, a group of anti-Israel activists burst into the opening of the Salzburg Festival — one of the world’s premier events for opera, music, and drama — waving Palestinian flags and shouting antisemitic slogans.

As Austrian Vice-Chancellor Andreas Babler began his opening speech at the event, six individuals stormed the stage, aggressively waving Palestinian flags and shouting “Blood on your hands!” along with other antisemitic slurs.

In another incident last month, a group of well-known Israeli classical musicians reported being refused service at a pizzeria in Vienna after staff overheard them speaking Hebrew.

One of the musicians recounted that while they were ordering their food, the waiter asked them which language they were speaking. When they replied in Hebrew, the waiter allegedly told them, “In that case, leave. I’m not serving you food.”

Cellist Amit Peled described in a social media post the “initial shock and humiliation” of the incident targeting him and his colleagues, violinist Hagai Shaham and pianist Julia Gurvitch, while they dined at the Ramazotti Italian restaurant.

“What struck us even more deeply was what came next — or rather, what didn’t. The people around us were clearly startled, some offered sympathetic glances … and then, quietly, they went back to their dinners, their conversations, their wine — as though nothing had happened,” he wrote. “Welcome to Europe, 2025.”

In a separate incident last month, an Israeli couple was denied access to a campsite in Ehrwald, a village in western Austria, after attempting to make a reservation to celebrate their 25th wedding anniversary.

According to local media, the couple attempted to register at the campsite, but after revealing their Israeli passports, they were denied entry and asked to leave, forcing them to find alternative accommodations.

“We have no place for Jews here,” the campsite operator reportedly told them.

When asked for comment, the campsite operators told the German newspaper Jüdische Allgemeine, “These people should much rather take care of the many children in Gaza. Otherwise, there is nothing to say.”

Then on Aug. 8, anti-Israel activists attacked Rabbi Shmuley Boteach at an anti-Israel rally in Vienna. He told Euronews that he felt “humiliated and shocked that this can happen in 2025 in Europe just for wearing a kippah.”

Boteach wrote about the crime on Aug. 11, asking, “Vienna must choose: Will it be the city of Mozart, of Schubert, of Mahler — or will it remain the city where Jews are attacked in the streets and statues of Jew-haters stand tall?”

The rabbi vowed that “for my part, I will not back down. I will wear my kippah in Vienna and all over Europe again. I will walk those streets standing tall (well, however tall a five-foot-six Jew can be) again. And I will make sure the world knows what happened there.”

Noting the trend of antisemitism surging across Europe in the aftermath of Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, amid the ensuing war in Gaza, Deutsch warned of an environment causing Jews to be cautious about identifying themselves publicly.

“Where is this supposed to go?” he asked. “It is unbearable that in the face of the threat, Jewish women and Jews constantly remember to hide Jewish symbols, not speak the language or avoid certain regions altogether. It can’t go on like this!”