London police face criticism for handling of vicious antisemitic attack targeting Hebrew speakers

Antisemitic incidents in London have risen a whopping 534% since October 7th.

By Ben Cohen, The Algemeiner

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.