Jewish Women and Children Targeted in Latest London Antisemitic Hate Crime Spree
Hasidic Jewish community members of Stamford Hill celebrating Purim. Photo: Alan Denney/Flickr.
A man verbally abused a 13 year old Jewish girl on a Transport for London (TFL) bus, Shomrim Stamford Hill, a local Jewish community watch group reported on Tuesday.
“I’m Adolf Hitler and I will kill the Jews,” the man, who has not yet been identified, said while using umbrella, pointed in the girl’s direction, to pantomime shooting a gun.
The incident follows a wave antisemitic hate crimes in London, which Shomrim has described as a “hate crimes pandemic.”
On Monday, the group reported that a man verbally abused a Jewish mother, her 14 year old daughter, and baby, shouting, “Go back to Stamford Hill troublemakers,” before sexually assaulting one of the children.
London law enforcement authorities have not announced any suspects or leads in either case.
“It’s a terrible state of affairs,” Shomrim London tweeted.
In another incident revealed by the group this week, a Jewish man walking home from synagogue on the Sabbath was accosted by a strange man wielding “a large chain” and forced to walk with him.
The Metropolitan Police Service has so far recorded 534 antisemitic hate crimes this year. There were 45 in the month of November, according to the department’s latest data.
Earlier this month, an Orthodox Jewish woman in the Stamford Hill neighborhood of London was stalked and assaulted by an unknown perpetrator. The suspect followed the woman, shouting “Dirty Jew,” and then snatched her shopping bag, “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing.”
Antisemitism has also become major theme in the United Kingdom’s “national discourse” in 2021, according to a new report by Community Security Trust (CST), an English nonprofit that provides counsel and security services to British Jews.
“Negative media coverage of, or political comment on, Jewish related events may be entirely legitimate, fair, and in the public interested,” CST. “Nevertheless, those debates can encourage antisemites or cause concern to Jews. This is more likely if such commentary involves inflammatory language or the use of traditional antisemitic imagery, or appears to single out one particular object or individual for scrutiny due to their being Jewish.”
Follow reporter Dion J. Pierre at @DionJPierre.