The case of the Jewish man collared by the Met for offending Hezbollah fans….Brendan O'Neill at the Spectator:
If you cheer such an eliminationist group, such a vile Jew-hating outfit, then it is the duty of every good Brit to offend you. To mock you and ridicule you and say ‘beep, beep’ to piss you off. That the Met, in this case, took the opposite view and sought to ringfence Hezbollah fanboys from offence is chilling.
Then there are the staggering double standards. I’ve seen anti-Israel agitators freely prance in the streets with the most sick-making banners. I’ve seen placards calling Jews ‘Christ killers’ and comparing the Jewish nation to the Nazis. I’ve seen the Star of David tangled with the Nazi swastika – the grossest libel that depicts Jews as the heirs to the monsters who once murdered them.
How many of these people had their collars felt? How many were interrogated for causing offence? If London is a city in which you can mock Jews but not Jew haters, in which you can defame Israel but not make fun of its anti-Semitic enemies, then I fear our capital is even more lost than we thought.
But worst of all, there’s the galling fact that a Jew was interrogated for mocking Jew haters. That a Jewish man was arrested for making fun of a movement that views his kind as an inferior species. To my mind this is as repulsive as arresting a black person for criticising the KKK. What was the Met thinking? This is too serious to let it blow over. Heads must roll over this humiliation of a British Jew.
But heads won't roll. "Lessons will be learned" they'll intone, but nothing will change. The Met's main concern, as they made clear, has nothing to do with the arrest of the Jewish man, but rather that they'd offended the marchers. From the original Telegraph article yesterday:
On Friday, with regard to the repeated references in the interview to the counter-protester having offended supporters of a proscribed terrorist organisation, the Met Police said the officer “clearly misspoke when she described those in the protest as pro-Hezbollah instead of pro-Palestinian”.
But they were pro-Hezbollah. That's the whole point.
A spokesman added that the man “was charged following a careful consideration of the evidence” and that the force would attempt to learn lessons from the episode.
The spokesman said: “We will reflect on the CPS decision not to proceed with the case, applying any learning to future investigations.”
