Yuri Foreman talking to CUFI Weekly. Photo: Screenshot.

Israel’s first world champion boxer Yuri Foreman invited victims of an antisemitic assault in New York last year to take boxing lessons from him to better defend themselves against future attacks, the athlete told the Christians United For Israel organization in a video released on Thursday.

Foreman, who was born in Belarus but moved to Israel at the age of 10, said he heard on social media about the two Jewish men who in December were assaulted in Brooklyn and called “dirty Jews” because one of them wore a sweatshirt featuring the Israel Defense Forces emblem. The boxer, who now lives in New York and is also an ordained rabbi, said he contacted the two victims and brought them to his gym in Brooklyn, where he offered them “a couple of [boxing] lessons.”

Foreman also commented on the recent spate of attacks against Jews, telling CUFI that antisemitism has “always been [and] it’s always will be, as long as Jews [are] alive. There’s even countries where there’s hardly any Jews living, but yet there are antisemites.”

“Don’t learn something from a [social media] reel, cartoon or comic,” he said, discussing those who express hatred of Israel. “That’s bad. I know a lot of people who learn their news from tweets, or from the cartoons, because that’s where our patience is. They show evil rockets with the Star of David on it and there are little babies there, and it’s emotion[al].”

“In boxing or martial arts, one thing that you have to master is your emotion,” Foreman continued. “If you are getting bullied and you get scared and the fear takes over, then it means that your fear just took advantage of you, actually took over completely.”

Foreman further talked to CUFI about his upbringing in Israel and his boxing career.

Watch CUFI’s full video with the boxer below: