(Taken at pro-Hamas demonstrations in Dublin and London.)
From my own experience as an identifiably Orthodox Jew, since the beginning of the operation in Gaza I have had things shouted at me like ‘death to the Jews’, ‘Hamas should finish where Hitler left off’ along with the usual spitting and angry looks which I’ve become accustomed to. However, yesterday it went a bit further. I attended the demo in Kensington High Street. Walking back to Gloucester Rd tube as was suggested by the Community Security Trust and Metropolitan Police, there was visibly high security on the route. I saw two friends to the tube station and decided I would walk to a friend’s house a mere 3 or 4 minute walk away since he had told me to stop by to say hello to him and his wife.
As usual, I wasn’t holding any kind of political symbol, flag, banner or placard and was just wearing my yarmulka. As I was about to ring on the doorbell I was set upon by two Asian youths (one wearing a keffiya and one wearing a badge with the Palestinian flag on his jacket) who punched me in the head, threw me to the ground and continued to kick and punch me in the head and other parts of my body until I managed to shout loud enough causing them to flee. I bashed on the door of my friend’s house, sat on the kitchen floor with blood coming out of my head and badly bruised elsewhere. Thank G-d, my injuries were not serious and the paramedics were happy for me to go and stay at a friend’s house until the morning so someone would be able to keep an eye on me. As for my friend who is living with his wife and 10-month old baby, the police have suggested that they go away for a couple of days since there are lots of ‘unknown’ people in the area who could make the place unsafe.
Anyhow… this is what it is like to be Jewish in Britain today.
(letter to "mad" Melanie Phillips)
If anyone is interested in the facts, there have been over 50 antisemitic incidents reported to CST in the past 12 days. This is a higher rate than during the first two weeks of the Lebanon war in 2006, which currently stands as the largest ’spike’ in antisemitic incidents we have ever recorded in the UK.
(Dave Rich of CST, which records anti-Semitic incidents in Britain, in a comment on a Harry's Place thread)
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1 comment:
Anti Semitism is wrong, no excuses.
What worried me today was the Pope making a statement that carefully explained that both sides had suffered, and both sides needed to stop and find peace with each other. And then called Gaza a "concentration camp."
The Simon Wiesenthal centre then replied by calling the Pope a "holocaust denier."
Some very clever and well read people must have been involved in those statements, and i cant believe those words were not carefully chosen. How can the people on the ground be blamed for this, when the leaders and role models are so pathetic?
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