Jewish Teens Flee Antisemitic Attack In Montevideo, Uruguay

Two Jewish teenagers in Montevideo were chased to the doorstep of their home by young men shouting antisemitic slurs and threatening them with pieces of paving tiles, in what Uruguay’s Jewish leadership denounced as a brazenly hate-driven assault.

The attack occurred Tuesday afternoon in the Punta Carretas neighborhood and was first reported Wednesday night by local Spanish-language outlets.

Reports said the boys, ages 13 and 14, were walking home from school in their uniforms from a local Jewish high school when two young men, apparently in their early twenties, confronted them.

The attackers, having identified the teens as Jewish, allegedly shoved them and shouted, “Jews, we know what you did,” a phrase widely understood there as blaming Jews for events tied to Israel and Gaza. As the boys fled, the assailants grabbed broken paving tiles from a construction site and chased after them, threatening to strike.

The pursuit continued all the way to the home of one of the boys. Once there, the attackers stood outside, hurled additional antisemitic insults, and warned the boy’s mother that they now knew where the family lived.

No physical injuries were reported, but both teens were left deeply traumatized. One parent described the ordeal as a “lynching attempt.”

The families filed a complaint at a local police station, prompting prosecutors to investigate potential hate-crime charges, including “incitación al odio,” or incitement to hatred. Police examined nearby CCTV footage, though no arrests had been reported by Thursday afternoon.

The Central Jewish Committee of Uruguay, the country’s main Jewish representative body, said it would fully support the family’s complaint and push for the incident to be prosecuted as an antisemitic crime.

In a public statement, the committee said the boys “were pursued, harassed, and threatened because they are Jews” and cautioned that rising hate speech was “enabling real attacks.” The group expressed confidence in the justice system but urged a clear national response to growing antisemitism.

Roby Schindler, the committee’s president, called the assault “outrageous” and said it should serve as an urgent warning to authorities and civil society groups.

Regional antisemitism monitors said the case reflected how online radicalization is increasingly spilling into physical violence. Eduardo Kohn of B’nai B’rith Latin America warned that hateful social-media messages “reach their destination” and urged Uruguayans not to normalize such attacks. A Spanish-language global antisemitism watchdog likewise condemned the incident and encouraged the public to report similar cases.

Jewish community organizations across Latin America have documented steep increases in antisemitic rhetoric and incidents following the October 7 Hamas massacre and the ensuing Gaza war, with some reporting surges of several hundred percent in threats, harassment, and vandalism.

Uruguay’s Jewish community, estimated at 15,000 to 18,000 people, is one of the region’s oldest. Although the country has long been considered relatively safe for Jews, community leaders have warned over the past year of rising incidents, including threatening graffiti and harassment near Jewish schools and institutions.

They linked the spike to increasingly toxic online conversations about Israel and Gaza, along with the spread of conspiracy theories and extremist discourse on social platforms.

The families involved said their primary concern is the safety and emotional recovery of their children, who remain shaken but uninjured. According to the parents, police and prosecutors assured them that the investigation is advancing.