A London council has left out antisemitism from a list of hate crimes, despite including transphobia and Islamophobia.
Towers Hamlets removed the mention of anti-Jewish discrimination from a webpage promoting support for National Hate Crime Awareness Week.
The poster has made no reference to antisemitism for four years, however listed disablism, homophobia and racism.
Following concerns raised by a councillor, the image online was altered so the word is finally visible.
The council stated: “Hate crime affects all communities, and we all have a role to play in recognising it and responding swiftly.”
Last year, Tower Hamlets was forced to remove Palestinian flags from council buildings and lampposts after it received legal complaints saying they fostered division and hostility.
Luftur Rahman, the mayor of Tower Hamlets, who was previously removed from office in 2015 after being found guilty of electoral fraud, said the flags were “symbols of solidarity and sympathy”.
Observers noted the irony of the exclusion of antisemitism being left off the poster, given the area was home to one of the UK’s oldest Jewish communities.
Tower Hamlets’ initial poster without antisemitism
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TOWER HAMLETS COUNCIL
The amended poster with antisemitism visible from the top
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TOWER HAMLETS COUNCIL
Jewish people have lived in Tower Hamlets neighbourhoods since the 17th century, but numbers have declined in recent years.
Metropolitan Police figures say the number of anti-semitic attacks in Tower Hamlets is significantly higher than Islamophobic attacks per head of population.
Since 2021, there have been 191 antisemitic attacks despite Jews only making up 0.6 per cent of the population.
This contrasts with 308 attacks on Muslims who make up 40 per cent of the population.
Across the UK, antisemitic hate crimes remain at a historic high since the Hamas terror attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023.
Jewish writer and Tower Hamlets resident, Hilary Freeman, told The Telegraph: “This is just hammering home the message that Jews don’t count. We’re just irritants. They really don’t care about us.
“Transphobic attacks have been going down and antisemitic attacks have gone up, yet it’s antisemitism that is left off the poster as a hate crime.
“Tower Hamlets has become extremely hostile to Jews. I’ve suffered antisemitic attacks in this borough, and so has my daughter at school. It’s got to the point where we are going to leave the area as soon as we can.”
Luftur Rahman, the mayor of Tower Hamlets, previously resigned in 2015 for electoral fraud
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PA
Commenting on the matter, James Cleverly, the Shadow Housing Secretary, said: “It’s sadly not surprising to see this borough’s anti-hate crime campaign identify every kind of hatred except the world’s oldest: antisemitism.
“In the wake of the murderous terrorist attack on a Manchester synagogue, and frequent hate marches on the streets of London, it is doubly unforgivable that Tower Hamlets’s Jewish community has been treated in this way.”
Former Labour MP and independent peer, Lord Austin, noted: “The council should rectify this immediately and investigate what happened. Anyone found to have deliberately removed it should be sacked.
“The fact is, Jews in this country are far, far more likely to be victims of hate crimes than any other religious minority.
“There can be no excuse for failing to confront Britain’s antisemitism crisis, most of all in a borough where the Jewish community has such deep historic roots.”
A spokesman for Tower Hamlets denied the omission was deliberate or a reflection of an anti-Jewish hate crime.
They said: “Any suggestion that a reference to antisemitism was removed or replaced from our graphics or materials would be entirely false. A cut out of the graphic on a webpage did not display the full image with all of the examples of hate crimes. This was changed so the graphic can be seen in full.
“Our No Place for Hate campaign materials highlight antisemitism, and thousands of these are handed out in our borough throughout the year, as we raise awareness about antisemitism and all hate crimes and about how to report them.”