The backlash continues: hate crimes soar to a six-year high
JULY WAS the second worst month on record for antisemitic incidents after the fallout from Israel’s Operation Cast Lead in December 2008.
The Community Security Trust said they expect to record up to 240 incidents for the month, what a spokesman called “a serious figure”.
Two Israeli theatre companies were forced to cancel their shows at the Edinburgh fringe after protests.
The Underbelly venue pulled a production by the Incubator group from Jerusalem. A spokesperson for the venue said: “The logistics of policing and stewarding the protest made it untenable for the show to continue.”
Ben Gurion University’s Negev Dance Company also cancelled over fears that their performances would draw protests.
A spokeswoman for the university said: “The students are all hugely disappointed for obvious reasons but as a public institution our main priority has to be the safety of our students.
“Other Israeli cultural groups such as the Bat Sheva dance troupe go through training and simulations on how to dance through people yelling at them,” she said. “If Incubator or Bat Sheva don’t perform they have no purpose. But as a university we have other responsibilities and only so many resources.”
Comedian Daniel Cainer, whose poster for his Jewish Chronicles show was defaced with pro-Palestinian stickers said: “This crosses the line from being an anti-Israel protest to antisemitism, just because my poster had the word ‘Jewish’ in it. People don’t separate these things out in their mind.”
At least two synagogues were daubed with graffiti or signs. At Kingston in Surrey a sign stating “child murderers” was stuck to the front door and the words “Free Gaza” were daubed on Hove’s Holland Road shul.
The Palestine Solidarity Campaign claimed responsibility for beaming a flag with the words “Free Palestine, sanctions now, stop the massacre” on to the Houses of Parliament.
A group calling itself Jews in Britain Against Genocide held a “die-in” outside the offices of the Board of Deputies and activists closed a drone manufacturing factory in the Midlands by climbing on to the roof at 5am.
The National Union of Students voted to boycott Israel at a meeting of its national executive council.
Elsewhere, a doctor in Antwerp, Belgium, refused to treat a Jewish woman with a broken rib and suggested she visit Gaza “to get rid of the pain”.
An Orthodox Jewish woman was prevented from shopping in a nearby fashion store, and in Liege police removed a sign at a cafe which declared in Turkish: “Dogs allowed but Jews are not under any circumstances”.
The mayor of mayor of Erpatak, Hungary, Mihaly Zoltan Orosz, posted a video on YouTube showing the execution of Benjamin Netanyahu and Shimon Peres puppets.
Hundreds of Italians signed an online petition attacking Israel for a “slow genocide” of Palestinians, and calling for a “Nuremberg trial”.
Omar Omeirat, a would-be politician in Filipstad, Sweden, quit his campaign after coming under attack for a Facebook post saying: “Our brothers and sisters in Palestine are slaughtered by the Jewish pigs”.