(JTA) – Police in London are looking for a man who was filmed assaulting a Jewish man and a child on the street in separate incidents on the same day last week.
Security footage shows a tall suspect punching a 64-year-old haredi Orthodox Jewish man as they pass one another on the street in the heavily-Jewish neighborhood of Stamford Hill. The victim sustained minor injuries, Shomrim, a Jewish security service, wrote on Twitter.
Earlier in the day, the same man punched a Jewish child in the neighborhood, Shomrim said. The child was not seriously hurt. Shomrim said they believed the incidents were hate crimes against Jews.
In a separate incident on Aug. 12, a 72-year-old man was slapped and had his kippah knocked off his head in another suspected hate crime in London.
That man, Ronnie Phillips, was walking near Wyndham Theatre on Charing Cross Road, in the city’s center, with his wife, the Jewish News of London reported.
The assaults are part of a major increase in the number of antisemitic incidents recorded in the United Kingdom this year by CST.
In the first half of 2021, CST recorded the highest-ever number of antisemitic incidents in any six month period since it began monitoring the issue in the 1980s. The tally for January-June in 2021 was 1,308 incidents, compared to 875 in the corresponding period the previous year. The total for 2020 was 1,668 incidents.
The spike in incidents is partially connected to the exchange of fire between Hamas and Israel in May, CST said. More than 600 of the 1,308 incidents recorded in the first half of 2021 occurred in May.
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