The Metropolitan Police are under fire after a London police officer was filmed saying that swastika displays during pro-Hamas protests “need to be taken into context” and may not be automatically antisemitic in an incident which the Jewish News Syndicate stated was reminiscent of the testimony by Ivy League university presidents to Congress last year that calls for genocide against the Jewish people depended on "the context."
In the footage posted to social media, a woman asks the officer why another policeman told her “that a swastika was not necessarily antisemitic or a disruption of public order.”
“That doesn’t seem right to me,” the woman said.
“A swastika is a swastika,” she added. “Under what context is a swastika not disrupting public order?"
The officer cited the relevant statutes under which the police have the power to deal with disruptive protestors and stated, “I haven’t said anything about it — that it is or isn’t — everything needs to be taken in context doesn’t it?”
“Why is a swastika not immediately antisemitism? Why does it need context? This is what I’m confused about.” the woman replied. “In what context is a swastika not antisemitic and disruptive to public order? That is my question.”
Another woman added, “Yeah but it’s a context of a hateful march."
The officer stated that he did not have “in-depth knowledge of signs and symbols.”
“I know the swastika was used by the Nazi Party during their inception, and the period of them being in power in Germany in 1934, I’m aware of that,” he said.
Social Creative CEO Emily Schrader, who posted the video to social media, wrote, “If you’re holding a sign with a swastika at an anti-Israel march — this is blatantly antisemitic.”
“Come on Met Police… this is pathetic,” Schrader said.
The Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA) organization called the officer's position “absolutely gobsmacking."
“The very notion that a British police officer could imagine a context in which the Nazi swastika is an acceptable image to be displayed in public is distressing,” a CAA spokesperson told the Daily Mail. The spokesperson added that the policeman's response disrespected the thousands of British soldiers and civilians who died to prevent the Nazi flag from flying over Britain during World War Two.
The Metropolitan Police defended the officer in the video and stated that he would not be disciplined.