Members of London’s Jewish community. Photo: Simon/Flickr.

An Orthodox Jewish woman in the Stamford Hill neighborhood of London was stalked and assaulted by an unknown perpetrator, a Jewish community watch group reported on Wednesday.

The suspect followed the woman, shouting “Dirty Jew,” and then snatched her shopping bag, “spilling her shopping onto the pavement whilst laughing,” according to Shomrim Stamford Hill, which provides security and support to London’s Orthodox Jewish community.

Antisemitic hate crimes have been an ongoing problem in London all year. In October, shortly before Halloween, what Shomrim has described as a “hate crimes pandemic” began in the area, leading to over a dozen attacks targeting Orthodox Jews. Recently, a 16-year-old, believed to be responsible for six of them was arrested.

Last Thursday, a cab driver shouted “This is the last time I am taking Jews as you kill Muslims in Israel” at a “heavily pregnant” Jewish woman after picking her up from Homerton University Hospital. In previous, separate incidents, a known local assaulted a Jewish resident of Stamford Hill while yelling, “You Jews, you think you run the world” and a man broke into a synagogue’s school, stealing $340 worth of salmon and, Shomrim said, “leaving the children without a proper lunch.”

The Metropolitan Police Service has so far recorded 534 antisemitic hate crimes this year. There were 45 in the month of November, according to the department’s latest data.

Antisemitism has also become major theme in the United Kingdom’s “national discourse” in 2021, according to a new report by Community Security Trust (CST), an English nonprofit that provides counsel and security services to British Jews.

“Negative media coverage of, or political comment on, Jewish related events may be entirely legitimate, fair, and in the public interested,” CST. “Nevertheless, those debates can encourage antisemites or cause concern to Jews. This is more likely if such commentary involves inflammatory language or the use of traditional antisemitic imagery, or appears to single out one particular object or individual for scrutiny due to their being Jewish.”