Eight recent immigrants from Soviet Georgia were charged with first degree murder by a Nazareth district court Friday in connection with the fatal beating last month of Subhi Naseir, a Nazareth Arab. Relatives of the accused created a commotion in the courtroom when the charges were read and police had to be called to restore order.
According to the charges, the eight Georgians, all residents of the new immigrant township of Upper, Nazareth, attacked a car in which Naseir was giving a driving lesson to a Russian Jewish woman, Regina Poliakovskaya, who was driving the car. They began to beat the woman for “going with an Arab when there are many Georgian Jews.”
When Naseir tried to intervene, they pummeled him into unconsciousness. He died on the way to a hospital. It wasn’t clear whether the attackers assumed there was a romantic liaison between the woman, who is married, and the Arab or whether they were incensed because she took driving lessons from an Arab instead of a Jew.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
