London bobby’s anti-Semitism

In a disgusting incident reminiscent of Germany after 1933, a London bobby has disgraced British police with his Orwellian refusal to allow a man to cross a street “because you are quite openly Jewish”. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak is appalled by the surreal incident, which occurred when Campaign Against Anti-Semitism chief executive Gideon Falter was out for his regular walk with friends after attending a Saturday synagogue service on April 13. It coincided, however, with a pro-Palestinian demonstration in Aldwych, near the Australian High Commission.

When Mr Falter, wearing a kippah (skullcap), attempted to cross the street, a burly Metropolitan Police officer blocked his way and was recorded telling him: “You are quite openly Jewish. This is a pro-Palestinian march.” Mr Falter, who offered to remove his kippah, repeatedly was threatened with arrest if he did not move on. London, he says, has become a “police-enforced, Jew-free zone”. As police barred his way, he was surrounded by people “with their faces covered, shouting repeatedly: ‘scum, scum, scum, scum’ ”. Others, ludicrously, shouted “Nazis”, “lock them up” and “disgusting” at Mr Falter and his fellow Jews. But Scotland Yard’s finest took no action: they neither arrested nor warned the baying onlookers. A poll published by The Times on Monday shows confidence in British policing among voters is barely at 37 per cent. That will be worsened by this encounter. Police told Mr Falter he was “not safe on the streets of London”. His presence near a pro-Palestinian march, a police sergeant warned him, could inflame tensions. Few things could be sadder in a city that sacrificed so much to defeat the Nazis in World War II.