Is "openly Jewish" a hate crime under the April Fools Scottish hate crime law?

[lechiffre55]

A Metropolitan police officer threatened to arrest a man for being "Openly Jewish" in London. Is this a hate crime in Scotland under the new hate crime laws?

I think it is. Could someone report it for me please I find it incredibly offensive and racist. I want to see what happens when Scottish Police try to get involved with racist actions taken by the Metropolitan Police.

https://twitter.com/Jebadoo2/status/1781393179683483960

Jews should be perfectly able to live and participate in society in the UK, without fear.

Ha ha I can see that going well. The Met must have hard drives full of evidence that these marches harbour many extremist islamists and anti-semetic individuals who would undoubtably pose a risk to "openly jewish" people in the area.

Some of the people commenting should be utterly ashamed of themselves. You may think you can hide your dislike of Jews/Israel/whatever and somehow justify blatant racism - but Jews see it. We see right through it. We are not naive, it was only 80 years ago that millions of normal citizens of Europe were slaughtered in the streets and towns while their neighbours watched, cheered or did nothing.
We don’t believe that the innate jealously and hatred has gone anywhere, we know it’s still there. But today with Israel in the situation it is, and with Jews being a tiny minority - these views are being given legitimacy. You can use the word Zionist if it makes you feel better, but it means the same thing. I’m not surprised but I am sad. Jews (And Israelis) have contributed so much to society yet they are hated for being successful or whatever.
Some of you need to check yourselves well, and address your deep seated antisemitism and question - why do I feel like this about Jews and not about blacks, Muslims, whatever.
Shame on you.

I'm going to try and play the both sides here a little.
The policeman in my opinion did genuinely fear for the safety and life of the Jewish man if he got close to the protestors. I agree with the policeman on this I do believe the life of the Jewish man would have been at risk.
Where I very strongly disagree with the policeman is in accepting that risk, and how he dealt with it. The risk is from people who would break our law. It is the primary duty of the policeman to uphold our laws and values. The rights of the Jewish man were utterly ignored and trampled on by the policeman in order for the police not to have to make the effort to uphold the law.
The police should have escorted the jewish man wherever he wanted to go, and arrested anyone who threatened or attempoted violence. If the Jewish man wanted to cross the street back and forth a hundred times/all day in front of the protestors that is his right. The police's job in my opinion is to uphold his rights. What the police did was threaten to arrest him because they didn't want to bother to uphold his rights. They literally trampled all over his rights because it was less effort than to uphold them.
On the talk of the Jewish man acting provocatively. So fukking what if he did want to be provocative. What are the protests if not provocative when the life of a Jewish man is at risk from the protestors? If it's ok for them to demonstrate hostility then it's equally ok for him to do the same. I'm sick and fukking tired of the police playing favourites with who they protect and who they prosecute. A police force that is biased is no police force at all, it's political activists in uniform, and I want it to stop.
One thing the Jewish man has done incredibly well is demonstrate just how biased the whole system is. The police will turn a blind eye when it suits them, and come down like a ton of bricks when they want. This is not unbiased policing, again it's activism. Justice is supposed to be blind, not choose sides.
I applaud the Jewish man for illuminating the problem so well. The press are all over it, and the head in the sand response from the Met is clearly not cutting it. They are acutally going to have to do their fukking job now, or keep facing the limelight of intense public scrutiny. I hope heads roll and keep rolling at the top of policing until the fukkers get off their arses and start upholding the law. That is their job after all. Quite frankly if police management isn't up to upholding the law then sack them and get someone who is.
I hope this Jewish man continues to highlight this problem and I wish him all the best. In highlighting the problem he's defending my rights under the law as well as his, and I quite like my rights being defended.

Police in Scotland decided that there was hate crime in an SNP member posting a Star of David intertwined with a swastika.

They said it couldn't be a hate crime because the person who reported it wasn't Jewish. They were wrong in the interpretation of the law (the complaint doesn't have to be from a person with the protected characteristic)

They were also wrong in fact. Nobody with a working brain cell would deny it was hateful.

I'm going to try and play the both sides here a little.
The policeman in my opinion did genuinely fear for the safety and life of the Jewish man if he got close to the protestors. I agree with the policeman on this I do believe the life of the Jewish man would have been at risk.

I think this is right. The Met know full well that an openly Jewish person is at risk of harm from elements within these marches but they don't have the officers on the ground to keep them safe if it kicks off so they attempt to remove the individual at risk because it's 1000% easier than dealing with the actual problem.

Not buying that. I accept they needed to protect him but they wouldn't have said

Openly Muslim, openly gay.

‘Or when she went totally batshit and implied one of the marches was going to disrupt the Rememberance Day events, although the march that day was no where near any of the ceremonies’

It wasn’t going near the Cenotaph after the Police forced the organisers to change the route. That’s not quite the same.

Did they actually arrest the man?
Is this for real?

That is also shocking!

I can hardly fathom that jewish citizens of London who try to counterprotest the pro-Palestine protests which definitely have elements of antisemitism to them, are accosted like this.
It is heartbreaking

So far as I can see, Gideon Falter was making the point that these marches contain antisemitic elements. And he made it: the police were afraid that he wasn't safe.

It's bloody shocking. I have Jewish friends and I worry for them now as I never have before.

this.

Apparently Pro-Palestinian marches have nothing to do with anti semitism - and yet a surprising number of participants ( and the police too, it seems) have a hard time knowing the difference between different things - as they slip side between hating on Israel, to hating on 'zionists', to hating on Jews.

It’s hideous being Jewish at the moment. I’ve always been at the end of casual racism, even though I’m not visibly Jewish, whatever that means - the hatred towards a country that is no worse or better than many other countries is only because it’s a Jewish country. People can deny it all they want - but it’s true.

The only 'good' jews are anti zionists ?

@LadyGooGaa It's terrible isn't it. Feel quite bad for saying this but I'm glad my DH isn't Jewish and kids not brought up to be Jewish. I'd hate for them to suffer with this.

I wonder if @songaboutjam realises just how fucking dangerous (and massively ignorant) her/his rhetoric is.

I suspect not! Being anti Israel is the just the most popular bandwagon at present.

I think the quotations marks indicate it wasn't the PP's own opinions. I think they were deliberately highlighting the weakness of certain attempts to pretend that 'anti Zionism' is distinct from antisemitism.

That was my take.

As in loads of people do say that stuff, but it's shown up as being nonsense when someone is apparently in danger for being visibly Jewish. As opposed to visibly Zionist, whatever that would look like.

Ah, so sorry @songaboutjam I missed your quotations so completely misconstrued what you were saying! Apologies!

The thing is, I'm not sure that is even true - even if most of those rabidly hating Israel are unaware of the origins of that hatred.

The use of 'good' anti zionist jews was a slip of the tongue revealing the fact that only jews who oppose Israel are considered acceptable.

In Left wing circles Jewish people usually have to declare their 'anti zionist' credentials if they are to be considered acceptable. It goes back to Stalin and his suspicion of supposed Jewish duplicity. The Jews could never be forgiven for prioritisng their Jewish identity over their identity as 'International Socialists'. The. 'good' Jews stayed loyal to the socialist vision and not the zionist one.

I don’t care if you’re anti Zionist or anti Jew. You (non Jews) have absolutely no right to explain or justify your hatred to a Jew. Don’t try to explain antisemitism or anti Zionism. Don’t tell us that the only Jew you tolerate is one who doesn’t believe that one country in the world should be a safe majority state for a people who are a minority in every other country in the world and have been ethnically cleansed from both Europe and Arab countries. If a Jew, or a POC or a Muslim or a whatever thinks you are being racist, then you are. Don’t try to explain to them why they are mistaken.

O.K! I can see that now!

Absolutely spot on. If any more proof were needed that, in the words of David Baddiel, Jews Don't Count, this is it.