London Police; You Look Jewish...

[rogue06]

Keeping protesters and counter-protesters apart to keep violence to a minimum during demonstrations is something police routinely do. So nothing to see here.

Threatening to arrest someone for looking Jewish is something I can see you supporting and excusing it because it wasn't his physical appearance but his attire.

I'm sure you'd support the police rounding up everyone wearing a crucifix who are in the vicinity of a pro-abortion protest.

[rogue06]

Speaking of absurdities, if there was any danger of the protest turning violent just because a Jewish man happened to be nearby, then surely the protestors should have been dispersed instead of threatening an innocent man with an unlawful arrest.

You can tell what the authorities favor by how they react.

For instance, if someone is saying something they like, but it could cause a problem, they go after those they deem could start a problem. The speaker, after all, has the right to express themselves.

But if it is something they don't like then they shutdown the speaker instead. Like how colleges "disinvite" conservative speakers because they might upset someone who might get violent, so it's just better to silence the speaker.

[Starlight]

I wonder if the danger to the Jewish man would have been alleviated if the police had moved the pro-Hamas, anti-Israel protesters away from the Jewish synagogue on the sabbath.

It does not appear that the protest march was anywhere near a synagogue.

The incident is being reported as having taken place in Aldwych. The nearest synagogue is ~50 minutes walk away.

It appears there was a counter-protest Aldwych, in which the protest and counter protest groups were kept behind separated barriers to prevent interaction and violence.

I bet that would have worked even better than arresting the Jewish man for leaving his place of worship and walking away.

They didn't arrest him, and he wasn't walking down the steps out of his place of worship. Perhaps, after attending synagogue, a group of people walked the ~50 minutes from the synagogue to attend the counter-protest?

From your posts I generally get the impression your face always looks like that. You seem to be wrong about everything all the time. It's quite impressive.

[Mountain Man]

You're making a lot of assumptions.

With regard to keeping protests non-violent, from the point of view of the police, it's a matter of managing the risks. The police trying to 'disperse' a protest can trigger violence. Better to let the protesters march down the street, holding their signs, and shouting their slogans, and through doing so vent their steam. Plus the protesters do have an inherent right to protest. You can't just go around breaking up each and every protest.

But, generally speaking, what you can do is keep counter-protesters from engaging too closely with the protesters. If there is a counter protest, then you can mandate a certain amount of distance between the protesters and the counter protesters. They can, for example, hold their protests at opposite sides of a road, wave their signs, shout things at each other and a line of police can stand between them.

The police on the ground around a protest are often in a decent position to judge the mood of the situation, and have some sense of what is likely to trigger an incident and what isn't. The various videos of the protest march in the OP incident seemed to show some other incidents of counter-protesters engaging in back and forth shouting with those protesters, and the police generally trying to limit that interaction. That's reasonably common behaviour by police, to ensure public safety. Given that background of that particular protest, it's not surprising that the officer didn't want more people interacting with the protesters as they were already riled up.

It's also a simple fact in situations where protesters are riled up, that police will opt for practical solutions. e.g. get the smallest, or the most cooperative group, to disengage. Keeping members of the public away from angry protesters tends to be simply easier than trying to make large numbers of angry protesters do something. Even if the protesters are more at fault, they often get their way due to sheer numbers. Out of sheer practicality it's easier to redirect the one member of the public trying to engage the protesters than it is to make the hundreds of protesters do any given thing. Even if you sit down and work out that the rights of the one member of the public should be respected over those of the hundreds of protesters, as far as the few police officers on the ground are concerned they can do one thing to defuse the situation (redirect one member of the public) but not the other (redirect hundreds of protesters), so they do what they can.

Also, what is with the false "just because a Jewish man happened to be nearby"? The Jewish man was literally trying to walk right up to the protesters. They were literally a few yards behind the officer. The Jewish man wasn't just "nearby", but was actively trying to interact with the protesters. It wasn't as if the officer was randomly wandering around London looking for Jewish people to threaten with arrest. The officer was part of a line of officers stationed a few yards from a protest, with a job to make sure the protest stayed peaceful, and he thought a Jewish man deliberately interacting with the pro-Palestine protesters might inflame the situation so he didn't want to let that happen because keeping things peaceful was his job.

If the policeman was just wandering around London and walked up to a Jewish person and said "you look Jewish, you shouldn't be in public, I'll arrest you if you don't go away", then absolutely yes, that would be anti-Semitism and totally unacceptable. But that wasn't remotely close to the ballpark of what actually happened.

You say, "Even if the protesters are more at fault, they often get their way due to sheer numbers."

So despite lightly mocking KingsGambit earlier, it turns out you actually agree with him when he said, "This means, practically speaking, that anybody who threatens violence while protesting gets to exercise veto powers over anybody else who wants to be in public. Consequently, there is every incentive to turn protests violent because that gives the protesters additional rights to turn those who disagree away."

[mossrose]

It does not appear that the protest march was anywhere near a synagogue.

The incident is being reported as having taken place in Aldwych. The nearest synagogue is ~50 minutes walk away.

It appears there was a counter-protest Aldwych, in which the protest and counter protest groups were kept behind separated barriers to prevent interaction and violence.

They didn't arrest him, and he wasn't walking down the steps out of his place of worship. Perhaps, after attending synagogue, a group of people walked the ~50 minutes from the synagogue to attend the counter-protest?

From your posts I generally get the impression your face always looks like that. You seem to be wrong about everything all the time. It's quite impressive.

From the article in the op:

"Falter was returning from a Saturday synagogue service and was wearing a kippah, or skullcap."

I highly doubt he left the synagogue 50 minutes away to hang around where a bunch of people hate him. And he was threatened with arrest because he "looked Jewish", and I have no doubt he would have been arrested. The police need to stop the ones threatening that man, not the man himself. It’s like how my son was badly bullied in junior high school, and the school’s solution was to tell us we should move him to another school, instead of them dealing with the perpetrators. No, it doesn’t, or at least it shouldn’t, work that way.

In your opinion, it’s just fine for people to stand in the streets and scream threats of violence against another group of people, and perhaps go so far as to act on those threats. suppose if a man pretending to be a woman was walking past a church just as the service ended and folks were leaving, and they waved and said "good morning, did you know Jesus loves you and will forgive you if you repent of your sins?", you'd be screaming for the entire congregation to be arrested. Because, to you and your kind, that’s really what "words are violence" means.

I use this smiley when I reply to you because of the stupid that drools out of your mouth every time you post anything.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

What a surprise that Fox News quote mined the incident.



If a more detailed video is watched the officer can be seen expressing his concern for Mr Falter's safety.

A longer video of the exchange can be seen here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...omment-protest

[CivilDiscourse]

What a surprise that Fox News quote mined the incident.



If a more detailed video is watched the officer can be seen expressing his concern for Mr Falter's safety.

A longer video of the exchange can be seen here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...omment-protest

Fox news didn't quote mine...they just <snipped for relevance>

[rogue06]

What a surprise that Fox News quote mined the incident.



If a more detailed video is watched the officer can be seen expressing his concern for Mr Falter's safety.

A longer video of the exchange can be seen here: https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/...omment-protest

So he's going to arrest him "for his safety" rather than protect him from any violence.

Something just seems a bit off about that. smiley hmm.gif

[seer]

So he's going to arrest him "for his safety" rather than protect him from any violence.

Something just seems a bit off about that. smiley hmm.gif

Either the Cops are cowards, don't want to defend the Jewish guy against the crowd, or they are siding with the crowd, being biased.

[Hypatia_Alexandria]

So he's going to arrest him "for his safety" rather than protect him from any violence.

Something just seems a bit off about that. smiley hmm.gif

Your problems with reading for comprehension are once again on display.

[Cow Poke]

Keeping protesters and counter-protesters apart to keep violence to a minimum during demonstrations is something police routinely do. So nothing to see here.

From the thread title, I had assumed it was some sort of racist judgement based on facial features. But, in actual fact, it was about what the man was wearing, that identified him as belonging to a group. In the video of his interactions with the officer, who was nothing but polite and verbally firm with him, the man confirms he is Jewish and that the identification based on what he is wearing is correct. The officer, out of concern for the Jewish man's safety, does not want him to place himself in the path of the pro-Palestinian protesters.

The officer's conduct is entirely reasonable: He is polite, non-violent, acting out of concern for public safety, and is not being racist.

Simply put, anyone who thinks this is anti-Semitism is a complete moron, or deliberately lying. They are also dangerously crying wolf, and by doing so reducing the chances that people take claims of anti-Semitism seriously in future. And by doing that, they are themselves a threat to Jews.

P.S. I see that the man involved is himself the chief executive of the organisation pretending the whole thing was anti-Semitic. So it seems it's just a vanity project on the part of himself. I wish he wouldn't endanger Jews everywhere by undermining the validity of claims of anti-Semitism in order to inflate his own ego.

I do appreciate your good grammar, spelling, clarity and sentence structure.

[Ronson]

[Roy]

I feel that is flatly false as a complete summary of the situation. It wasn't as if the officer was wandering the streets randomly threatening to arrest people for looking Jewish.

It wasn't a complete summary of the situation, just a comment on what the officer said.

I'm usually pretty quick to condemn the actions of police (usually for shooting innocent people), as other discussions in this forum make clear, but in this case it appears to me that the officer was in the right: He had the safety of the public in mind, and specifically the safety of this Jewish man in mind. The officer's actions, in that sense, were pro-Semitic, not anti. He didn't use violence. He didn't arrest anyone. He used verbal communication and ensured a member of the public wasn't put in danger, and didn't trigger any violent incident.

He had the right idea, I think, but expressed it in the wrong way.

The more I find out about this incident, the more I think Mr Falter was deliberately trying to create difficulties for the police. He and his colleagues are not innocent victims.

[Roy]

From the article in the op:

"Falter was returning from a Saturday synagogue service ..."

Do you think that is true?

[seer]

The more I find out about this incident, the more I think Mr Falter was deliberately trying to create difficulties for the police. He and his colleagues are not innocent victims.

So the Jews show up to face anti Semitism and they are in the wrong? Were they going to start trouble?