Antisemitism, Terror Support Rampant at Anti-Netanyahu Protests in London
by Shiryn Ghermezian
A protester who shouted to a group of Jews, “You only understand money” was arrested during an anti-Netanyahu rally on Wednesday. Photo: Twitter.
Anti-Israel activists hurled antisemitic epithets and waved flags representing terror groups on Wednesday, during a protest against Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to London.
An estimated 400 demonstrators gathered outside the residence of British Prime Minister David Cameron at 10 Downing Street to protest the arrival in the U.K. of Netanyahu, who is scheduled to meet with Cameron on Thursday morning.
Photos from the rally show protesters holding signs that call for Netanyahu’s arrest, while others wave Palestinian flags and Hezbollah banners.
One video from the scene shows a protester taunting Israel supporters nearby. The man, wearing a black-and-white keffiyeh and holding out a coin yells, “Here’s a penny… That’s all you understand. You only understand money.” He was later arrested by police.
Another clip, published on Facebook, shows a Palestinian woman endorsing genocide against Jews before going on to deny the Holocaust. Pro-Israel activist group Sussex Friends of Israel identified the woman as Pamela Hardyment, “a well known antisemite and anti-Israel activist.”
Also wearing a black and white keffiyeh and carrying an umbrella adorned with the Palestinian flag, Hardyment told one Jewish protester, “6 million Jews, wiped out. I want them out of Israel… They can f*** off [and] go into the sea.” When one man suggested “you’d have to kill them all,” she replied, “so be it.”
A separate video shows anti-Netanyahu protesters surrounding Simon Cobbs, founder of Sussex Friends of Israel, and chanting “shame on you” as police try to maintain order.
The protest comes just days after British Conservative Party Minister and Secretary of State for Business Sajid Javid slammed what he called “dinner-party antisemites” for allowing the spread of anti-Jewish hatred, the Daily Mail reported on Tuesday.
Javid condemned the “respectable, middle class people who would recoil in horror if you accused them of racism, but are quite happy to repeat modern takes on age-old myths and slanders about Jews.”
He also said, “These attitudes create a climate in which antisemitism is seen as less bad than other forms of discrimination. And in that climate, the most violent extremism can take root and it can thrive,” and called on “every decent Briton of any faith or none to join us all in the battle against extremism and antisemitism.”
