A 4-year-old boy wearing a kippah was slapped on his head as he walked home from a Chabad house in Auckland, New Zealand.

The boy was said to be traumatized by the apparent anti-Semitic attack last week, which was witnessed by his mother, according to a report Nov. 23 in the New Zealand Herald.

The alleged offender was a man in his 20s “of Middle Eastern appearance,” said New Zealand Jewish Council president Stephen Goodman, according to the article. Goodman said the man apparently laughed as he fled in a car with several other men.

“Anti-Semitism in any form cannot be tolerated,” Goodman said. “Racially motivated attacks against children are cowardly and have no place in New Zealand.”

Goodman said that in the Jewish community, there had been talk of children not wearing their traditional clothes in public for fear of being abused.

Approximately 7,000 Jews live in New Zealand, mostly in Auckland, among a population of 4.5 million. — jta