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London Police Apologize for Not Protecting Jews From Anti-Israel Protesters Outside Israeli Restaurant Miznon
An exterior view of the Miznon Restaurant along Hardware Lane in Melbourne, Saturday, July 5, 2025. Photo: AAPIMAGE via Reuters Connect
London’s Metropolitan Police apologized for failing to adequately protect the local Jewish community during a recent pro-Palestinian protest outside the Israeli restaurant Miznon in Notting Hill.
The International Jewish Anti-Zionist Network UK (IJAN UK) has spoken openly on social media about organizing weekly Friday protests outside the restaurant co-owned by restauranteur Shahar Segal and chef Eyal Shani, both of whom are Israeli.
The anti-Israel group urges locals to boycott the restaurant because Segal has organized initiatives to provide food to soldiers in the Israel Defense Forces, Shani has cooked for IDF soldiers, and both men are proud Zionists. IJAN UK has accused the Miznon owners of being “genocidal Zionists” and “genocide enablers,” and labeled the eatery itself a “Zionist entity” that supports genocide against Palestinians.
A protest outside Miznon’s Notting Hill location on Jan. 9 included “violent disorder” as demonstrators stood close to the restaurant’s entrance and chanted “violent and intimidating slogans,” including over loudspeakers, according to a letter to police signed by members of Parliament, The Telegraph reported. According to IJAN UK, one protester at the demonstration was arrested by police for allegedly chanting in support of an “intifada,” which calls for physical violence targeting Jews and Israelis. The protester was released by police shortly afterward.
Metropolitan Police Deputy Assistant Commissioner James Harman told The Telegraph that in relation to the Jan. 9 protest, Scotland Yard should have done more to control the situation.
“It is clear the planning, arrangements, and resources put into place that evening were not adequate, and we apologize for the distress caused to the business owner and wider Jewish community,” he said. “While we have a lawful duty to balance the right to protest, our response wasn’t good enough on this occasion and we recognize incidents like this create real fear within the Jewish community. We have taken immediate steps to review our handling to ensure lessons are learnt. Our plans should have been more robust to adequately protect the community, and we will be firmer in future – for example implementing effective conditions ahead of events where the law allows us to, and having sufficient resources available to enforce them.”
Officers should have ensured that protesters were not “immediately outside” the restaurant, but “unfortunately the policing plan did not in fact prevent such disruption and intimidation,” Harman admitted.
The police apologized for mishandling the situation after 89 members of Parliament and others in government wrote a letter to Metropolitan Police Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley and expressed their “extreme concern” regarding the Miznon protests. The letter noted that Miznon had been “targeted by extremists on seven occasions since August last year” and that during the protest on Jan. 9, “around 50 protesters were allowed by police to stand close to the restaurant’s entrance, chanting violent and intimidating slogans amplified by loudspeakers and drums.”
The letter further claimed that police “wrongly prioritizes the right to protest over the rights of the Jewish and Israeli community to go about their daily life without facing harassment, intimidation, the threat of serious disorder, and damage to property.”
“While an apology is welcome, it does not make up for allowing extremists to run rampant on our capital’s streets week in, week out, for more than two years,” the Campaign Against Antisemitism said in a post on X. “A serious overhaul is clearly needed in how Palestine protests are policed. The Met no longer has anywhere to hide.”
Harman told The Telegraph he acknowledges that Jewish communities “have faced increased abuse, intimidation, and fear in recent times and this is unacceptable.”
“No community should have to live like this, and we have intensified our efforts to keep Jewish people in London safe – stepping up protective security measures, increasing neighborhood patrols and taking action against those who seek to cause fear with placards and chants during protests,” he said.
Antisemitic incidents have surged in the UK, especially London, over the past two years, following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel. A study released in November found that nearly half of British people now consider the country unsafe for Jewish communities.
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The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration
ס׳האָט זיך לעצטנס געשאַפֿן אַ נײַער סאָרט לייענקרײַז דורך פֿייסבוק, וווּ מע לערנט תּורה אויף ייִדיש צוזאַמען.
אינעם לייענקרײַז, וואָס הייסט „די ייִדישיסטישע ישיבֿה“, לייענט מען חומש מיט רש״י — סײַ אויפֿן אָריגינעלן לשון־קודש סײַ אויף ייִדיש־טײַטש. „די גרופּע איז אָפֿן פֿאַר אַלע מינים מענטשן,“ האָט דערקלערט דער לינגוויסט און ייִדיש־אַקטיוויסט לייזער בורקאָ, וועלכער האָט אָרגאַניזירט די גרופּע. „פֿרויען און מענער, ייִדן און נישט־ייִדן, געי און ׳גלײַך׳. נײַע תּלמידים דאַרפֿן פֿאַרשטיין ייִדיש גוט, אָבער זיי דאַרפֿן נישט האָבן קיין תּורהדיקן הינטערגרונט.“
די גרופּע טרעפֿט זיך יעדן דינסטיק דורך פֿייסבוק. נאָך מער פּרטים אָדער כּדי זיך צו פֿאַרשרײַבן, שטעלט זיך אין קאָנטאַקט מיט בורקאָ, אויפֿן אַדרעס leyzertag@gmail.com אָדער דורך פֿייסבוק.
The post The Yiddishist Yeshiva is open for registration appeared first on The Forward.
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A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall
(JTA) — When David Freedman discovered a long-forgotten photo album in his parents’ Montreal basement last year, he found nearly 100 pages of century-old photographs from his grandfather’s year in British Mandate Palestine, capturing Jerusalem street scenes, market stalls and holy sites.
The photographs were not only century-old and in near-perfect condition, but included figures who would later become central to Jewish medical and political history, among them Israel’s future first president Chaim Weizmann, Jerusalem ophthalmologist Abraham Ticho, malaria researcher Israel Kligler, future British prime minister Winston Churchill and Herbert Samuel, Britain’s first high commissioner for Palestine.
David Freedman said he knew he had “struck gold” when he found the album, which had been untouched for decades. “I realized in disbelief I was looking at extraordinary images of Jerusalem,” he said.
Though Freedman said the album showed his grandfather’s “passion for skillful, impromptu photography,” it was images of a site that epitomizes endurance that are having the broadest impact.
Freedman’s pictures of the Western Wall has inspired a public appeal by the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum, which is asking people to look through old albums and attics for photographs, postcards and other visual material that could help expand the historical record of Judaism’s holiest site.
The request comes ahead of a major exhibition opening in 2027 marking 60 years since the 1967 Six-Day War brought the wall, known in Hebrew as the Kotel, under Jewish control for the first time in nearly two millennia.
Although the Western Wall is now one of the most photographed sites in the world, museum curators say the visual record of earlier decades remains surprisingly fragmented, with many of the most intimate images likely still tucked away in private collections and family albums.
“The Western Wall, the Kotel, in its simplest form, is a structure of ancient stones. Yet its true meaning has never resided in the stones alone — it has been shaped and elevated by the countless individuals who have stood before it over the centuries,” Eilat Lieber, the museum’s director and chief curator, said in a statement.
Next year’s exhibition, titled “Eyes on the Wall” and curated by Shimon Lev and Yael Brandt, will be the first large-scale exhibition dedicated entirely to the Western Wall, the museum said, and will trace its transformation over nearly 2,000 years. It will be one of the major exhibitions staged by the Tower of David Museum since it reopened in 2023 after a $50 million renovation of its ancient citadel complex.
The wall, the exposed section of an ancient retaining wall around the Temple Mount, the site of the biblical Jewish temples, has long been Judaism’s most sacred places of prayer and pilgrimage. From 1948 until the 1967 Six-Day War, when Israel captured the Old City and East Jerusalem from Jordan, Jews were barred from going there.
Among its most iconic images was David Rubinger’s photograph of three Israeli paratroopers standing at the wall shortly after its capture, looking upward in a mixture of awe and disbelief. The picture was taken 59 years ago this week.
Abraham Orkin Freedman, a Canadian physician and Zionist activist, took his photographs before the site was so contested. He arrived in Palestine in July 1920, just as Britain was replacing military rule with a civil administration, and stayed until 1922, serving during that period as managing director of Hadassah Hospital. His grandson David, also a doctor, said the album’s timing gives it much of its historical value, with photographs that capture people in the streets, as well as the terrain and buildings of Jerusalem during the nascent years of the British Mandate.
Among the images Freedman uncovered, the one that struck him most was a photograph of women praying side by side with men at the oldest part of the Western Wall, a scene far removed from the gender-separated prayer sections at the site today. The question of mixed-gender prayer at the Wall remains politically charged, with a recent High Court order to advance the egalitarian section followed by Knesset moves to strengthen Chief Rabbinate control over prayer at the site.
After recognizing the album’s significance, Freedman met with his family who decided collectively to give it to the Tower of David Jerusalem Museum for safekeeping, research and public access. Freedman said the family was proud the album had found “a new home, not many meters from where my grandfather once stood.”
Lev said he hoped the appeal would bring more discoveries like Freedman’s into public view, expanding the visual record of the Western Wall beyond official archives.
“There is something profoundly moving in the moment when an intimate private photograph transcends its original purpose and becomes an important historical testimony,” Lev said.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post A century-old Jerusalem photo album sparks search for forgotten images of the Western Wall appeared first on The Forward.
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5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances
(JTA) — Britain’s Crown Prosecution Service announced Tuesday that an 18-year-old man has been charged in connection with the March arson attack that destroyed four ambulances owned by Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer emergency service.
Subhan Ahmed, a British national, was charged on Monday with “assisting an offender” in connection with the arson.
The ambulances were set ablaze in the early morning of March 23 in Golders Green, a heavily Jewish neighborhood in London. The incident spurred increased patrols in Jewish communities.
The charge is the latest development in an investigation being led by the Metropolitan Police’s counter-terrorism unit.
Four others have already been charged in connection with the attack.
Three British nationals — 20-year-old Hamza Iqbal, 19-year-old Rehan Khan and 18-year-old Judex Atshatshi — along with a 17-year-old dual British and Pakistani national were all charged in April with “committing arson, destroying or damaging property, and being reckless as to whether life would be endangered.”
The four have remained in custody ahead of a trial planned for January. Ahmed, meanwhile, was released ahead of a June 16 court date.
The ambulance arsons came at the early edge of a wave of incidents that have put London Jews on edge and induced the city’s police force to step up their presence in Jewish communities. The incidents have included multiple incendiary devices placed near synagogues as well as the stabbing in April of two Jewish men in Golders Green. The Metropolitan Police reported last week that antisemitic hate crimes in the capital rose 72% in May.
Following the announcement of Ahmed’s charge, the Community Security Trust, a Jewish organization, thanked the police and the Crown Prosecution Service “for their ongoing work investigating this attack and other arson incidents targeting the Jewish community.”
It added in a statement, “These are very serious allegations, and it is right that those responsible are being held accountable.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post 5th man charged in March arson of London’s Hatzola ambulances appeared first on The Forward.
