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| Calls for protection from UK anti-Semitism
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The head teachers from one of the most prominent Jewish schools in London have called for extra protection following a recent spurt of anti-Semitic attacks on students.
One assault last Monday saw a group of senior pupils from the religious Hasmonean School attacked by three men with a baseball bat on a main street in the Jewish area of Hendon.
In another two incidents youngsters from the school were abused on a bus running through the north west London.
Hasmonean is split into boys and girls sites. Consultant Headteacher of Hasmonean boys’ school Martin Clark told London’s Jewish News newspaper that he believed police officers need to patrol the buses used by the school’s pupils.
Such action has never been undertaken previously, but Clark said it was time to take a prominent stance.
“It is quite clear these aren’t isolated incidents. We don’t want this to escalate into something more serious,” Clark said.
“My understanding is that it is a British Transport Police issue and one of their duties is to put officers on buses when such incidents take place. We’ve requested that they do that,” he added.
The school head said details of the attacks have been passed to local police authorities as well as the CST – the British Jewish community’s security organisation.
More must be done
Beverley Perin, Headteacher at Hasmonean girls school, added that while she is glad that the police and CST are making efforts to prevent such assaults, she thinks more must be done.
“We appreciate the work being done by both the local police the transport police and the CST,” Pinn told Jewish News. “We would, however, welcome extra police resources in this area.”
A Barnet police spokesperson said the local force was in regular contact with Jewish schools and the CST but an increase in patrols has as yet not been decided on.
Despite holding a relative comfortable status in the UK, the 330,000 strong British Jewish community has suffered increasing numbers of anti-Semitic attacks in recent years.
Incidents prevalent
A CST report released in January did show a small drop in incidents, although the study stressed that this could be attributed to “two clusters of incidents in 2004, each with a single perpetrator, that by themselves accounted for 60 incidents.”
The report noted how both Prince Harry’s decision to wear a Nazi uniform and the London mayor Ken Livingstone’s comparison of a Jewish journalist with a Nazi guard specifically led to an increase in anti-Semitic abuse in the UK.
And even after CST document was released, it was announced that the Board of Deputies of British Jews, the representative Jewish community body, who took Livingstone to court over his comments, was sent anti-Semitic hate mail because of its actions.
According to the Jewish website totallyjewish.com, the Board’s chief executive Jon Benjamin said one of the notes suggested that “Iran was right” – in reference to the country’s President Ahmadinejad’s calls for Israel to be ‘wiped from the map’.
Other anti-Semitic incidents in the UK already recorded in 2006, include the distribution of leaflets in Manchester, northern England, protesting the construction of a new building at a Jewish school.
The leaflet, discovered last month, was reported to have included the slogan “No Jew school in Heaton Park…Supporting the campaign to defend our English park”, and featured an image of the British Union Jack flag.
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