A Jewish woman who confronted a Met Police officer after he said that swastikas ‘need to be taken into context’ when she reported seeing them at a pro-Palestine protest has said the force needs ‘basic education’.
Jocelin Weiss, 30, was blown away after being told by police that the Nazi symbol was ‘not necessarily anti-Semitic or a disruption of public order’ when she saw it being displayed on a poster of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Met has sparked a major backlash, including on US news websites, after video emerged of an officer seemingly justifying the use of swastikas to Ms Weiss at Saturday’s march.
Now it shouldn’t be illegal to display a swastika, but the fact the Met Police will arrest someone for peacefully counter protesting a pro-Hamas march, and defend and justify the display of swastikas is telling.
David Farrar runs Curia Market Research, a specialist opinion polling and research agency, and the popular Kiwiblog where this article was sourced. He previously worked in the Parliament for eight years, serving two National Party Prime Ministers and three Opposition Leaders.
5 comments:
The Palestinians are Semites, so how can it be 'anti-Semitic' to support them?
Netanyahu is not a Semite. He is a Polish born Zionist.
Seems to me in the context quite appropriate. The nazis persecuted and deposed a racial group and the Israelis are doing the same. Is civilian bombing hugely different from the cocentration camps?
(Hitler adopted the swatika from one he saw as decoration in a catholic church.)
The swastika is being used purposefully by the pro-Palestinians to protest the destruction of Gaza and its residents. IMO it is totally appropriate for them to use the most offensive symbol they can find considering Israel's cruelty and war crimes.
And DPF calling them pro-Hamas is also inflammatory and inaccurate. But that is typical of those who support the genocide.
Some unbelievably stupid comments already posted here. The swastika is an irredeemably racist symbol, forever to be associated with the genocidal attempt by the Nazis to systematically wipe out a complete race of people, for its own sake. To appropriate it for one side of a conflict that, as tragic as it is,is far from that, is utterly and unforgivably repugnant.
Yes, Pete. Some unbelievably stupid comments, Pete.
You are outraged about the use of a symbol. They are outraged about the murder, starvation and destruction in Gaza. Clearly your values are wrong.
“ The swastika is an irredeemably racist symbol”
No, it isn’t. In the 1990s I visited a Hindu display in the Chch cathedral and all the walls were lined with swastikas. India is still full of swastikas. Not a racist symbol at all in that context.
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