A Jewish man says he was assaulted early Monday morning in Golders Green, a heavily Orthodox neighborhood of London where residents are on high alert after recent antisemitic attacks.
In a statement to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, London’s Metropolitan Police said the assault was being treated as an antisemitic hate crime and said the victim received hospital treatment for injuries to his face and back. No arrests have been made.
The victim, identified as Shalev Ben Yakar, 22, told YNet that he was attacked after he stepped out of an apartment in the heavily Jewish neighborhood at around 2 a.m. Monday local time to take a phone call.
Ben Yakar claimed that, after hearing him speaking Hebrew, a group of five or six men began chasing him and shouting insults at him in Arabic. The group eventually caught up with him, he said, dragging him across the road and tearing his clothes.
“They kicked me like an animal and didn’t stop,” Ben Yakar told the BBC. “They were shouting ‘Are you Jewish’? I was thinking they could kill me.”
The incident comes as Jews are on high alert in Golders Green, where two Jewish men were stabbed on the street last month and four ambulances owned by Hatzola, a Jewish volunteer emergency service, were set ablaze in March.
“Incidents like this underline the very real dangers facing Jewish communities,” the Community Security Trust, Britain’s main antisemitism watchdog, said in a statement about Ben-Yakar’s assault.
The Jewish Leadership Council, a British Jewish umbrella organization, wrote in a post on X that the incident marked “yet another appalling attack in the heart of the Jewish community in Golders Green.”
“There must be a robust response from law enforcement which demonstrates that those who violently attack Jews will face the full force of the law,” the post continued.
The Metropolitan Police have rolled out a host of new initiatives meant to keep Jews safe, including forming a team of 100 officers to patrol Jewish communities specifically. The announcement of the special team earlier this month followed an emergency meeting convened by Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who has denounced the spate of antisemitic attacks.
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