Illustrative Hasidic Jewish community members of Stamford Hill celebrating Purim, c. 2013. Photo: Alan Denney/Flickr.

Another antisemitic hate crime has occurred in the Hackney borough of London, a Jewish community watch group reported on Thursday.

According to Shomrim Stamford Hill, which provides security and support to Hackney’s Orthodox Jewish community — one of the largest in Europe —  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.

The incident took place amid an antisemitic “hate crime pandemic” that began in Hackney shortly before Halloween. Recently, the Metropolitan Police arrested a 16-year-old who is responsible for six assaults that have targeted Jews since then. In other, 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 “leaving the children without a proper lunch.”

Antisemitic hate crimes are an ongoing problem in London, where 487 have already been recorded this year, and Jews throughout England and Wales experience an average of three hate crimes per day, according to analysis by Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), a UK nonprofit.

Last Thursday, the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) convicted Abdullah Qureshi, who trekked 200 miles from West Yorkshire to Stamford Hill to assault Jewish residents, of racially or religiously motivated assault and bodily harm.

Qureshi, who had previously plead guilty to two other related assaults, attacked a 14-year-old boy and a 64-year-old man walking to a synagogue over the course of two hours on August 18, 2021, according to prosecutors.