Connect with us

RSS

‘You Aren’t The Only One Who Called:’ London Police Response to Brutal Antisemitic Attack on Hebrew Speakers Under Scrutiny

ILLUSTRATIVE Demonstrators protest in solidarity with Palestinians in Gaza, amid the ongoing conflict between Israel and Hamas, in London, Oct. 28, 2023. Photo: Reuters/Susannah Ireland

A Jewish woman in London called a police emergency number at least 10 times during a vicious antisemitic assault in the early hours of Sunday morning, only to be told by the operator, “You are not the only one who called tonight.”

The 28-year-old woman, who gave her name as Tehilla in an interview with The Telegraph news outlet about her ordeal, said she and two 25-year old male friends were on their way to a nightclub in London’s busy West End at around 1.30 am when they were accosted by a group of men who overheard them speaking Hebrew.

“They heard us talking and said, ‘Are you Jewish?’ I said ‘yes, I’m Jewish,’ and then they started chanting ‘Free Palestine’, and f— Jews, all this kind of swearing at us,” Tehilla recalled. “So we just tried not to get into trouble, to walk away, but they started following us and then all of a sudden, it started with like two or three guys, and all of a sudden, they called all their friends and 15 to 20 guys started attacking us physically.”

Tehilla’s male friends suffered blows to the head, while she was attacked while attempting to defend them.

She added: “I hurt my leg, they punched me in the neck. I tried to run away and I called the police so many times, at least ten times and I kept crying to them, ‘I’m a girl, there’s a group of guys attacking me and my friends because I’m Jewish, please can you come, I’m scared I’m going to die.’”

Tehilla said that the Metropolitan Police “don’t really care. They kept saying ‘I’m sorry, it takes some time, you are not the only one that called tonight.’”

No-one has been arrested for the assault, which is being treated by police as a hate crime.

“We are investigating this incident as an antisemitic hate crime,” investigating officer Detective Supt. Lucy O’Connor told local news outlets. “I know how upsetting such inexcusable violence is for anyone who was injured or who witnessed the incident, and also for the wider community. I share their concerns.”

O’Connor noted that police officers “arrived at the scene some 28 minutes after they were called. Of course, I wish we could have come to their aid sooner.” She then emphasized: “I can assure Londoners, tackling antisemitic crime is a priority for the Met. There is no place for hate in our city.”

In a separate statement, the Community Security Trust (CST) — a voluntary organization dedicated to communal security — confirmed that “this appalling incident was reported to CST’s 24/7 control centre last night and we are in contact with the victims. We will be raising it with police and will provide ongoing support to the victims.”

Antisemitic attacks rose by an eye-watering 534 percent between the Hamas pogrom of Oct. 7 in southern Israel and the middle of December, according to data collected by the CST, with nearly 2,100 incidents reported.

“These are all instances of anti-Jewish racism, wherein offenders are targeting Jewish people, communities and institutions for their Jewishness,” the CST observed. “In many cases, these hateful comments, threats to life and physical attacks are laced with the rhetoric and iconography of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel politics.”

Concern within the Jewish community that law enforcement agencies in the UK are not dealing decisively with antisemitism has been widespread since the Hamas atrocities.

The post ‘You Aren’t The Only One Who Called:’ London Police Response to Brutal Antisemitic Attack on Hebrew Speakers Under Scrutiny first appeared on Algemeiner.com.

Post Views: 440
Related Topics:
Continue Reading

RSS

Britain Concludes Israel Not Committing Genocide in Gaza

A picture released by the Israeli Army says to show Israeli soldiers conducting operations in a location given as Tel Al-Sultan area, Rafah Governorate, Gaza, in this handout image released April 2, 2025. Photo: Israeli Army/Handout via REUTERS

Britain has concluded that Israel is not committing genocide against Palestinians in Gaza but criticized “utterly appalling” civilian suffering there, in a government letter, ahead of a meeting between Prime Minister Keir Starmer and the Israeli president.

Israel has been accused of perpetrating genocide in Gaza despite its military campaign there targeting the ruling terrorist group Hamas, which openly seeks the Jewish state’s destruction and started the current war with its Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israeli communities.

Jerusalem rejects the accusation, citing its right to self-defense following the Oct. 7 attack, in which Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists killed 1,200 people and kidnapped 251 hostages.

Israel also says it has gone to unprecedented lengths to try and avoid civilian casualties, noting its efforts to evacuate areas before it targets them and to warn residents of impending military operations with leaflets, text messages, and other forms of communication.

Another challenge for Israel is Hamas’s widely recognized military strategy of embedding its terrorists within Gaza’s civilian population and commandeering civilian facilities like hospitals, schools, and mosques to run operations and direct attacks.

Starmer is due to meet Israeli President Isaac Herzog, a leader who has a largely ceremonial role, at Downing Street on Wednesday, his spokesperson said.

The Gaza war has strained Britain-Israel relations. The Israeli government is enraged by Britain‘s plan to recognize a Palestinian state and block Israeli officials from attending its biggest defense trade show this week.

Starmer is facing criticism from some of his Labour lawmakers for agreeing to meet Herzog.

Asked whether the government’s legal duty to prevent genocide had been triggered, David Lammy, Britain‘s foreign minister until Friday, wrote in a Sept. 1 letter to a parliamentary committee that the government had carefully considered the risk of genocide.

“As per the Genocide Convention, the crime of genocide occurs only where there is specific ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group,’” he said in the letter seen by Reuters.

“The government has not concluded that Israel is acting with that intent.”

Lammy was foreign secretary from mid-2024 until Friday when he was replaced by Yvette Cooper and appointed deputy prime minister as part of a reshuffle.

His letter added: “The high civilian casualties, including women and children, and the extensive destruction in Gaza, are utterly appalling. Israel must do much more to prevent and alleviate the suffering that this conflict is causing.”

The long-held British government position has been that genocide should be determined by courts.

Post Views: 6
Continue Reading

RSS

Israel Is Always Rolling the Rock Up the Hill — But Is That a Bad Thing?

Israeli protestors take part in a rally demanding the immediate release of the hostages kidnapped during the deadly October 7, 2023 attack on Israel by Hamas, and the end of war in Gaza, in Jerusalem September 6, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun

Sometimes, truth is counterintuitive. For Israel, insights of classical mythology could help to understand the country’s survival options.

From ancient Greece, Jerusalem could learn that Olympian gods had condemned Sisyphus to roll a huge rock to the top of a mountain — and the stone would fall back of its own weight. By rendering this judgment, the deities imposed a punishment of interminable and useless labor. Simultaneously, they revealed something paradoxical about human life in general:

Useless labor need not be meaningless. Amid tragic circumstances, such labor can even be heroic.

As a metaphor, Israel is Sisyphus. Foreseeably, for the Jewish State, the gargantuan rock will always roll back to its point of origin. So why should “Sisyphus” push?

For Israel, there is no comprehensive military solution to its multiple security problems. Accordingly, in the heroic fashion of Sisyphus, Israelis will need to accept the burden of incessant conflict and avoid continuously contrived remedies (e.g., the childishly-imagined “Abraham Accords”). But what then?

For Israel, though difficult to understand, the burden of perpetual conflict is not the “worst case.” That case is not to endure one war or terror attack after another. Rather, it is to try to work its way free from the penalties of an absurd geopolitics by knowingly enlarging the absurdity. A pertinent example of this self-defiling contradiction would be for Israel to wittingly carve “Palestine” from its own still-living body.

Let us return to the elucidating Greek myth. Israel should recall that Sisyphus is not a pathetic figure. He is a heroic and tragic figure. This is because he labored valiantly, against all odds, and in spite of an all-too-conspicuous futility.

Today, 20 years after Ariel Sharon’s Gaza “disengagement,” hopes for “Palestinian demilitarization” endure. These are inherently vain hopes. For the moment, the theatrical genre portrayed by this durability can be described as “farce.” Resembling the bleak and minimalist poetics of Samuel Beckett, the unraveling “play” is meaningful but still preposterous. True tragedy contains calamity, but it may also reveal greatness. In the final analysis, such greatness means heroic attempts to endure misfortune without losing hope.

The Jewish people have always accepted an obligation to ward off disasters “as needed.” Formally, at least, Jews have understood that all humans have “free will.” Saadia Gaon included freedom of the will among the central teachings of Judaism, and Maimonides affirmed that human beings must stand alone in the world “to know what is good and what is evil, with none to prevent him from either doing good or evil.”

For Israel, free will should be oriented toward life — to the blessing, not the curse. Israel’s highest obligation should be to strive in the direction of individual and collective self-preservation by using refined intelligence and disciplined acts of will. Where such striving would be limited to narrowly-tactical remedies, the outcome could never rise to the dignifying levels of tragedy.

In the ancient Greek vision of “high tragedy,” there is clarity on one key point: The tragic victim is one whom “the gods kill for their sport, as wanton boys do flies.” It is precisely this wantonness, this caprice, that makes a situation authentically tragic. Otherwise, it would merely display pathos.

In proper theatrical terminology, there is tragedy but there is also farce. In farce, matters may end badly, but sometimes there is a last-minute rescue by deus ex machine, a “god in the machine.” By definition, of course, no “god in the machine” could rescue a Jewish state. To recall the specifically Jewish commentary of Rabbi Yania: “A man should never put himself in a place of danger, and say that a miracle will save him, lest there be no miracle….” (Talmud, Sota 32a and Codes; Yoreh De’ah 116).

Aristotle understood, in Poetics, that true tragedy must elicit pity and fear, but not pathos. Pathos is unheroic suffering. Moreover, the Greek philosopher identified tragedy with characters who are “good,” who suffer only because they commit grave error (hamartia) unknowingly.

The promise of meaningful Israeli peace with a persistently murderous adversary, whether Iran, “Palestine,” or others, has always been a delusion. Nonetheless, for Jerusalem, protracted war or terror could hardly represent a coherent policy choice. Quo Vadis?

Like Sisyphus, Israel must learn to understand that its “rock,” the agonizingly heavy stone of national survival, will never remain securely at the summit. Still, it must continuously struggle without tying collective survival to transient tactical victories or some imagined condition of “total victory.” Truth is exculpatory. Israel must prepare to labor against the ponderous “rock” for no other reason than to endure.   

For Israel, true heroism lies in recognizing something far beyond normal understanding: Pain and uncertainty are not necessarily unbearable; sometimes, they must be borne with full faith and equanimity. Failing such tragic awareness, the government and people of Israel would continue to grasp at tactical victories and illusory remedies. The most illusory remedy of all is “total victory.”

Israel is not Sisyphus, and there is no reason to believe it must endure without personal and collective satisfactions. Even if finally made aware that the struggle toward a permanently-receding summit may define “success,” the Jewish State could still learn that tragic struggle would be heroic.

To survive into the future, Israel’s only real choice will be to keep rolling the rock upwards, not surrender to any vacant political or diplomatic promises. On all the official maps of authoritative Palestinian decision-makers, not just Hamas, Israel has been sentenced to cartographic disappearance. On these maps, ipso facto, Israel has already suffered a virtual extermination. The best way to keep such extermination figurative is not to seek “total victory,” but to struggle heroically for sequentially achievable goals.

Unlike Sisyphus, Israel and its people can still enjoy palpable achievements and multiplying satisfactions. Like Sisyphus, Israel should recognize that though its life will require perpetual struggle, the struggle itself could be ennobling.

Prof. Louis René Beres was educated at Princeton (Ph.D., 1971) and is the author of many books and scholarly articles dealing with international law, nuclear strategy, nuclear war, and terrorism. In Israel, Prof. Beres was Chair of Project Daniel (PM Sharon). His 12th and latest book is Surviving Amid Chaos: Israel’s Nuclear Strategy (Rowman & Littlefield, 2016; 2nd ed., 2018).

Post Views: 10
Continue Reading

RSS

10 Appalling Moments at the People’s Conference for Palestine 2025

US Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) addresses attendees as she takes part in a protest calling for a ceasefire in Gaza outside the US Capitol, in Washington, DC, US, Oct. 18, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Leah Millis

For the second year in a row, the People’s Conference for Palestine (PCP), which took place in Detroit, Michigan, attracted some of the biggest names in the pro-Palestinian community (and pro-Hamas community, for that matter). These included antisemitic veteran activist Linda Sarsour, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP)’s Hatem Bazian, and propped-up pro-Hamas activist Mahmoud Khalil, among others.

The conference was filled with panelists and keynote speakers who expressed anti-Western sentiments, spoke about “intifada” as if it were an acceptable form of protest, called for an end to Zionism, and more. The language was militarized, negative, and sought to encourage “liberation” through violence and anger.

Some of the speakers are terrorists, some terror sympathizers, and many regurgitated Hamas propaganda to thousands of people, including children, attending the conference.

This was not an event that promoted peace and equality between Israel and the Palestinians, but one that incited hatred and encouraged violence.

Here are ten moments Honestreporting has chosen to highlight as the worst of the PCP:

1. Online streamer Hasan Piker encouraged attendees to “find the anger in [their] heart” to continue the Palestinian “resistance” movement “out of spite.”

What better way to make the world a better place?

It is important to note that Piker also called Jewish-American comedian Amy Schumer one of “the worst people out there.” All Schumer has done is publicly stand against antisemitism, speak out for Israeli victims of October 7, and condemn Jihadist terrorism. It’s food for thought.

2. Activist Imam Omar Suleiman expressed support for the “Holy Land Five” — men who were convicted for funneling money to Hamas through their fake non-profit, the Holy Land Five Foundation, in what was the largest successful terrorism financing prosecution in US history.

Suleiman portrayed the biggest terror financiers in US history as “men stripped away from their families for the crime of feeding Palestinian children.” The imam whitewashed the truth, calling the foundation the “largest charity for Palestine.” He sought to evoke sympathy for their families, recounting the pang of sadness he felt at a wedding for one man’s child — a celebration clouded by his absence.

3. Mayor Eduardo Martinez (Richmond, CA) said he thinks of Hamas — a terror organization — as his childhood self standing up to bullies.

The audience cheered when he gave this despicable analogy. But it’s telling — this is what the “pro-Palestine” agenda is all about. They normalize, justify, and downplay heinous and unspeakable atrocities as standing up to bullies.

4. Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), a Congresswoman supposedly representing Americans, refers to the US Congress as an “empire” whose halls are “decaying” and celebrates this idea…

… while boasting that a “granddaughter of Falasteen” has been sent by Detroit to Congress.

 

Her presence as a government official lends an air of legitimacy to this anti-American and anti-Western conference. Tlaib, a Palestinian-American supposedly serving US citizens, did not even don an American flag pin, just Palestinian garb. She also spewed lies about rape and murder and insinuated that innocent Palestinians are regularly imprisoned and intentionally starved by Israel.

5. Democratic Front for the Liberation of Palestine (DFLP) founder Omar Assaf was a virtual panelist at the event, and he called for rescinding the Palestinian Authority’s recognition of Israel, a withdrawal or rejection from any peace agreements, and providing “protection” and “support” for “popular action,” also known as terrorism.

The degree of whitewashing terrorist activities and agendas, while appalling, also speaks volumes about the organizers of the conference and what their “movement” stands for. Assaf wants to “prohibit” arrests of terrorists. He does not believe in peace with Israel and has said so in previous interviews. It doesn’t seem like anyone batted an eye; in fact, the audience cheered and clapped at the end of his monologue.

6. A Columbia University career development counselor called for the downfall of the world order.

It’s one thing to stress that change is needed, but a whole other thing to suggest that the current world we live in, a world that values diplomacy and Western values, should be dumped for the “liberation” of Gaza.

7. Well-known Hamas propagandist and London-based plastic surgeon, Dr. Ghassan Abu-Sittah, encouraged the crowd to destabilize the West and promoted an antisemitic conspiracy that suggests Israel controls all Western institutions.

This is being said out loud at a major conference in the United States — a Western country. This kind of rhetoric may also incite violence, which would go beyond the bounds of freedom of speech. At the very least, it speaks volumes about the agenda of the pro-Palestinian movement.

8. Abu Baker Abed is a Palestinian “journalist” and a terror sympathizer. He was given a platform at the PCP, where he talked about how UK outlet The Guardian asked him to remove a post online in which he “praised the resistance” if he wanted to continue working with them, and he declined to do so.

Abed won an Iranian state media PressTV’s “journalist of the year” award, and encouraged the audience not to be deterred by threats to their reputation or career if they publicly support terrorism. The fact that the PCP invited him to speak is appalling.

9. The PCP offered a two-day children’s program, which included a curriculum on Palestinian “resistance” for ages six through twelve.

Children were invited out on the stage as the next generation of “resistance” activists, wearing keffiyehs and leading the chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

A Palestinian Youth Movement organizer suggested that these children will one day be on the “front lines” of protests and “won’t be deterred” by the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC). It’s alarming that children that young are being militarized and used for a movement’s political agenda. It absolutely appears to be indoctrination, as Stu Smith, investigative analyst for the Manhattan Institute, put it above.

10. The Detroit News newspaper was the only outlet that covered this event extensively and did not address any of the previous hateful and violent rhetoric that was promoted at the conference. 

Instead, they portrayed terror sympathizer and PressTV “journalist of the year” winner Mosab Abu Toha as an English teacher who wants to provide education for Palestinian children.

At the conference, Mosab Abu Toha, an English teacher, said one of Gaza’s greatest needs is education.

During a panel, he asked the audience to financially support efforts that ranged from teacher supplies to building new schools. Palestinians who fled to Egypt also need help with education because the country doesn’t allow them to enroll in its schools.

They also photographed violent embroidery for their online gallery. Yes, you read that right.

Photograph is a screenshot. Image credit: Katy Kildee/The Detroit News

“Armed resistance” means terrorism — violence like rape, decapitation, mutilation, murder, and brutally kidnapping and starving Israelis. This piece of embroidery, which was available for purchase at the event, justifies and encourages atrocities like October 7.

The Manhattan Institute’s Stu Smith did expose the conference for what it was, however, and presumably watched and cut all the livestreams to provide a thorough analysis.

How can a journalist and a journo-photographer attend a conference that platforms terrorists, terror sympathizers, and is filled with anti-Western rhetoric without addressing it? Quotes from Michigan Jewish leaders are welcome, but these journalists who attended the event should have blown the movement wide open. They should have reported what they witnessed.

Instead, they covered it without asking any questions — and asking questions is half the job.

The author is a contributor to HonestReporting, a Jerusalem-based media watchdog with a focus on antisemitism and anti-Israel bias — where a version of this article first appeared.

Post Views: 11
Continue Reading

Copyright © 2017 - 2023 Jewish Post & News