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Actor's 14-yr-old son attacked for being a Jew

The 70-year-old actor revealed the shocking news in an Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times (published March 15), explaining how he told his child: "Dylan, you just had your first taste of anti-Semitism."

Michael Douglas says his 14-year-old son, Dylan was the victim of an anti-Semitic attack while his family was on vacation in Europe last year.

The 70-year-old actor revealed the shocking news in an Op-Ed piece in the Los Angeles Times(published March 15), explaining how he told his child: "Dylan, you just had your first taste of anti-Semitism."

Douglas wrote that his son was left in tears after been harassed at a hotel pool by a strange man who saw him wearing a Star of David necklace ( a Jewish symbolic medal).

He wrote: "I had an awful realization of what might have caused the man's outrage... After calming him down, I went to the pool and asked the attendants to point out the man who had yelled at him.

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"We talked. It was not a pleasant discussion. Afterward, I sat down with my son and said: 'Dylan, you just had your first taste of anti-Semitism.'"

Although the Oscar winner wasn't raised a Jew (his dad, Kirk Douglas was a Jew but his mom, Diana wasn't), Michael says his son picked interest in Judaism so he was forced to raise him so.

He told of the first time he had to defend his faith, when a high school friend casually commented: "all Jews cheat in business... Anti-Semitism, I've seen, is like a disease that goes dormant, flaring up with the next political trigger".

However, he isn't content to just accept such circumstances, commenting that he hopes his son will never have to teach his children about it the way he just had to.

He issued a call to action for people to fight back against such feelings of hate, saying: "So that is our challenge in 2015, and all of us must take it up. Because if we confront anti-Semitism whenever we see it, if we combat it individually and as a society, and use whatever platform we have to denounce it, we can stop the spread of this madness.

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