London Mayor Sadiq Khan held a roundtable meeting with Jewish and Muslim faith leaders on Thursday following a sharp rise in hate crimes in the capital. The meeting included representatives from the Community Security Trust (CST) and Tell MAMA, organisations that support victims of antisemitic and anti-Muslim attacks.
Metropolitan Police figures show a dramatic increase in hate incidents during October, with 218 antisemitic offences recorded between 1 and 18 October, compared to 15 in the same period last year. Islamophobic incidents rose to 101, up from 42. So far, 21 people have been arrested, and officers are reviewing 1,400 reports of potentially illegal online content.
Iman Atta, director of Tell MAMA, said Palestinian Muslim families had reported graffiti on their doors with words like “killer, terrorist and murder” and Nazi symbols. She added that Muslim women had received death threats on the London Underground. Jonny Newton, director of communications at CST, said the Jewish community was “feeling very vulnerable” and that attacks had “dredged up inter-generational trauma and pain”.
Mayor Khan said it was “important to come together to stop hate crimes” and that police would “take a zero tolerance approach”. The meeting comes amid ongoing tensions over the Israel-Hamas conflict, with pro-Palestinian demonstrations taking place outside Labour Party headquarters on Friday.
Separately, the Campaign Against Antisemitism criticised the Met for preventing it from displaying images of Israeli children kidnapped by Hamas on a van billboard in Parliament Square. The Met said it had a “responsibility for public safety” and aimed to avoid “groups with strongly opposing views coming into immediate contact”.
