Since Hamas’s attack on Israel earlier this month, the Jewish community in London has been on edge, and synagogues, schools, and other sites are seeing enhanced protection.
“People feel vulnerable and people feel frightened, and right now the recorded incidents of anti-Semitism are a record,” said Raymond Simonson, chief executive of the JW3 arts, culture and entertainment venue in the north of the UK capital.
“There’s never been this many incidents… in the UK as there have been in the last 20 days,” he told AFP.
“We’ve doubled our security. The Metropolitan Police have quadrupled their visits… to make sure we’re safe. It’s the only way we can do it,” he added.
JW3 installed an exhibit titled “The Empty Shabbat Table” last Friday in an effort to honor the more than 200 hostages that Israel claims Hamas has captured.
After the attack, Simonson said he realized how little he had appreciated the Jewish day of rest, which he had always observed with his family.
There were over 200 vacant seats, including high chairs, arranged around a large table with the phrase “kidnapped” next to the names, ages, and nationalities of the hostages.
In the bloodiest attacks in Israel’s history, Hamas militants broke through the Gaza border on October 7, killing over 1,400 people, most of them civilians.
Israel’s ceaseless retaliatory shelling has killed almost 8,300 Palestinians since then, 3,457 of whom were youngsters, according to the health ministry in Hamas-run Gaza.
There have been numerous large-scale demonstrations in London in favor of the Palestinians in Gaza, and the Met said that 408 anti-Semitic incidents had been reported between October 1 and October 27.
The force stated on Friday that this is in contrast to just 28 during the same time previous year.
It also stated that there had been 174 incidents of Islamophobia thus far this year, as opposed to 65 during the same period in 2022.
