Can Jews now be arrested for wearing a Star of David?

For the second time in little more than a year, a man has been interrogated by London’s Metropolitan Police seemingly for being Jewish.

In August, a Jewish lawyer was arrested during a protest outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington. Although officially he was detained under the Public Order Act for allegedly breaching the agreed conditions of a protest, the police’s line of questioning suggests his Jewishness was the real issue. Specifically, police said the fact that he was wearing a small Star of David necklace – just two centimetres in diameter – had ‘antagonised’ pro-Palestine protesters.

A video of the police interview, which was published this week by the Telegraph, offers a terrifying insight into modern policing. ‘What necklace are you wearing?’, an officer growled. He demanded to know the suspect’s ‘political beliefs’ and asked why ‘police shouldn’t act’ if other people had a ‘feeling you [were] antagonising them’. ‘Because the Star of David was out and present’, the officer said, police ‘felt that was antagonising the situation’. When the Jewish man’s lawyer said he had ‘a concern about the question about the Star of David’, the officer asked: ‘Why are you concerned?’

None of this is to suggest that the Met are themselves anti-Semitic, or that they believe wearing the Star of David to be an inherently criminal act. Rather, what the police are tacitly admitting here is that any outward expression of Jewishness is like a red rag to a bull to anti-Israel protesters. They are acknowledging that these marches that pose as peaceful are stuffed with Islamists and anti-Semites, who will be riled up by the presence of visibly Jewish people. This raises an obvious question: why are the police arresting Jews instead of those who would cause them harm? Tellingly, the man alleges that the marchers called him, among other things, a ‘Zionist baby killer’, but the police preferred to detain him.

There is so much that is alarming about this arrest. The detainee – who practises as a lawyer – claims that he attended the rally as a legal observer and that he was arrested when he began filming pro-Palestinian protesters – something he is perfectly entitled to do. Yet according to the police, this meant that he went ‘beyond observing to provoking’.

He was also held in custody for what, on the face of it, appears to be an utterly unjustifiable length of time. He was arrested at 7pm in the evening and was not released from Hammersmith police station until nearly 5am the following morning. He was treated as if he had perpetrated a serious crime.

On Sunday, the Met denied any wrongdoing, insisting that the media are misrepresenting the case. They said the man was getting ‘very close’ to protesters and ‘provoking a reaction’. ‘Officers had to intervene at least four times to ask the man to return’ to an area earmarked for counter-protesters. Even if this is true, it does not explain why the police interview focussed so much on his Star of David. The Met have serious questions to answer here. Blaming the media won’t cut it.

This is not the first time that the Met have taken issue with Jewish symbols. Infamously, when Gideon Falter was threatened with arrest last year for a potential ‘breach of the peace’ at a pro-Palestine march in London, an officer remarked that he appeared ‘openly Jewish’. Falter, CEO of the Campaign Against Anti-Semitism, was wearing a kippah at the time. The police initially insisted they arrested Falter for refusing to ‘move on’ when ordered to, but then why was his Jewishness remarked on at all? The Met subsequently apologised, but only after it was shamed into a response from the wide reporting of the incident.

The sad truth here is that the Met have picked a side. They are bending over backwards to appease the hate marchers, even if that means removing Jews from view. The police have become the footsoldiers of bigots and cranks.

Hugo Timms is an editorial assistant at spiked.