London Jewish neighborhood again vandalized with swastikas
Cars and buildings hit in Stoke Newington, as UK government report hails progress in combating anti-Semitism
By JTA December 31, 2014, 1:28 am
More than 20 cars and buildings in a Jewish community in north London were vandalized with swastikas.
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The Nazi symbol was drawn on approximately 27 cars in the Osbaldeston Road area of Stoke Newington on Sunday night, The Daily Mail reported. An unnamed 32-year-old man was arrested in connection with the vandalism Tuesday. The neighborhood is home to as many as 20,000 haredi Orthodox Jews.
“There is a large Jewish community that lives here with Holocaust survivors and children of Holocaust survivors, and to see swastikas is not a pleasant thing for them,” Meir Taub, a volunteer for Jewish neighborhood watch group Shomrim, told The Daily Mail. “People were shocked, scared and fearful.”
This incident comes just over a week after a primary school and private home in the same neighborhood were defaced with swastikas.
The attack came as a new United Kingdom government report showed significant progress being made in combating anti-Semitism.
The “Government Action on Anti-Semitism” report, published Monday by the Department for Communities and Local Government, noted advances despite a surge of incidents this summer during Israel’s military operation in Gaza. In July and August, there were 543 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.K., more than the entire previous year. Incidents included physical assaults, vandalism and graffiti.
The report, which notes that anti-Semitism in the U.K. is lower than in every other Western European country, recommends subsidizing extra security measures at Jewish schools and implementing a “zero tolerance” approach to online hate crime, according to the Daily Express.
Eric Pickles, the U.K.’s Communities and Local Government secretary, told the Daily Express that new measures to stamp out anti-Semitism on university campuses will be introduced and that the nation’s schoolchildren will be taught about the Holocaust. Pickles said the public needs to be reassured that hate crime offenders will be punished.
The report also documents anti-Semitism on the Internet and notes that a new committee, the Anti-Cyberhate Working Group, is working to counter the trend.
Vivian Wineman, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, told the Daily Express that his group is “reassured to see the advances being made to address a number of issues and by the government’s positive attitude generally.”
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