Haredi journalist Mordechai Halpern was verbally assaulted while boarding a train at Jerusalem's Yitzhak Navon station on his way to Tel Aviv on Wednesday.
Halpern had just stepped into the carriage and asked its only occupant, a secular man, if he had the right train. Instead of replying, the man started yelling at him: "Die, you parasite! Ask your G-d why you're even alive. Someone like you should be rotting under a tombstone. Get out of here, get out of my face."
Halpern, who writes for the JDN news site, related how at first he tried to protest, asking the man why he was speaking that way and what he had done to provoke the abuse. "It didn't help - he just said even worse things, things I won't repeat. Since it was just me and him in the carriage, I got off the train - I was scared to stay there alone with him. A few minutes later, a few other people arrived and entered the carriage so I boarded again."
Halpern wrote on Twitter immediately following the incident: "The truth? I'm shaking. It was a scary experience which I don't wish on anyone."
He added that he later discovered that it wasn't the first time this particular individual had behaved in a similar way. "Another haredi man told me that this guy also cursed him," he wrote.