Although it is a good news source and has some excellent features, The
Guardian
is a Left wing newspaper and it is obvious form this story by what it
selects to say
and what it does not. However, it seems clear enough that most
of the anti-Semitic incidents reported on were committed by Muslims.
BR Note
----------------
Antisemitic attacks in UK at highest level ever recorded
Robert Booth ("The Guardian," February 5, 2015)
The number of antisemitic incidents in the UK has reached the highest level
ever recorded, with reports of violence, property damage, abuse and
threats against members of Britain’s Jewish population more than doubling last
year .
The Community Security Trust, a Jewish security charity which runs an
incident hotline, recorded 1,168 antisemitic incidents against Britain’s
291,000
Jews in 2014, against 535 in 2013 and 25% up on the previous record in
2009.
Theresa May, the home secretary, described the figures as “deeply concerning
” and “a warning to everyone to do more to stop antisemitism in Britain”,
while Yvette Cooper, the shadow home secretary, said they were “appalling”
.
The Association of Chief Police Officers revealed the figures were
consistent with an increase in antisemitic crimes reported in recent weeks
following last month’s terror attacks in Paris when four shoppers were killed
by an
Islamist attacker at a kosher supermarket.
CST said in 2014 there were 81 violent assaults, 81 incidents of damage and
desecration of Jewish property, and 884 cases of abusive behaviour, more
than double the number in 2013, several hundred of which involved social
media platforms like Facebook and Twitter. CST’s logs include a letter sent to
a Jewish organisation which read: “Gaza is the Auschwitz. The inmates are
fighting back. The Jew wears the jackboot and armband now.”
The charity said the surge in antisemitism was fuelled by reactions to the
conflict in Gaza in July and August that claimed the lives of 2,131
Palestinians and 71 Israelis, according to the UN. It appears to reflect an
international trend. Last year in France and Austria the number of incidents
doubled, according to reports by the Service de Protection de la Communauté
Juive and the Vienna-based Forum Against Antisemitism.
In the UK in July alone there were more antisemitic incidents in one month
than the previous six months put together, but 2014 was already set to
eclipse the previous year as a worse period for antisemitism, CST said. Jewish
people were directly abused in the street at a rate of more than one a day,
particularly if wearing religious or traditional clothes or a Jewish
school uniform. Incidents reported to the CST included a man shouting at a
group
of Jewish schoolchildren who had boarded a bus in London: “Get the Jews
off the bus” and “I’m going to burn the bus.”
On 18 November, the day that worshippers at a synagogue in the Har Nof
neighbourhood of Jerusalem were killed by Palestinian attackers, there was a
spike of 11 incidents in a day. The SCT logs record that in Birmingham “four
south Asian males, one possibly carrying a knife, tried to gain entry to a
masonic hall that was formerly a synagogue while shouting: ‘Kill the
infidels, you are Satan-worshippers, are there any fucking Jews in there’.” On
the same day a rabbi driving through London reportedly had “slaughter the
Jews” shouted at him in Arabic by a man running his finger across his throat
in a cutting action.
“Last year’s large increase in recorded incidents shows just how easily
antisemitic attitudes can erupt into race-hate abuse, threats and attacks,”
said David Delew, chief executive of the CST, which started recording
antisemitic incidents in 1984. “Thankfully most of the incidents were not
violent
but they were still shocking and upsetting for those who suffered them,
and for the wider Jewish community.”
Prominent Jewish figures have recently talked openly about rising
antisemitism and the CST said increased concern about antisemitism could have
led
to a rise in reporting. Last month the actor Maureen Lipman said she has
considered moving to New York or Israel. However, a survey for Jewish Policy
Research published last July found only 18% of British Jews had ever
considered leaving the UK because they didn’t feel safe, and that fewer
British
Jews consider antisemitism a problem than their counterparts in France,
Germany, Italy or Belgium.
Eric Pickles, the communities secretary, said: “These attacks are not only
an attack on British Jews, but an attack on all of us and our shared
values. This is totally unacceptable. Those who perpetrate hate crimes of any
kind will be punished with the full force of the law.”
One in five of the incidents were threats or abuse on social media,
fuelling claims that Twitter, among others, is not cracking down hard enough
on
hate-speech. In August, Luciana Berger, the shadow health minister, received
a message on Twitter from a 21-year-old neo-Nazi, Garron Helm, that showed
her with the Star of David on her head. It used the hashtag #Hitlerwasright
and called her a “communist Jewess”. Helm was jailed for four weeks.
Berger was then bombarded with more than 2,500 hate messages tagged
#filthyjewbitch. After Helm’s release, more antisemitic tweets began to emerge
from his Twitter account. When Ed Miliband tweeted a link to his article about
Holocaust Memorial Day, the user of the account tweeted back “Burrrn! lol”
.
Berger said she was horrified by the CST figures. “I know from the online
hate campaign directed at me by neo-Nazis at home and abroad, that
antisemites are using every digital platform to intimidate and harass
Britain’s Jews,
” she said. “Digital media companies, particularly Twitter, need to
sharpen up their acts and move faster to remove accounts being used to spread
and incite hate. To date, they have been too lax, and moved too slowly,
allowing racists a free rein.”
Cooper called on “companies like Twitter to take stronger action against
hate crimes on their platforms”. Next week she is expected to outline Labour’
s hate-crime strategy which will urge Twitter to speed up its removal of
racist and antisemitic tweets, improve its communication of criminal
activity online to the police, and prevent offenders simply restarting abuse
from
fresh accounts from the same IP address.
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