Scotland Yard has deployed ‘manhunt’ teams to track down the perpetrators of attacks on London’s Jewish communities.
Met Police Deputy Commissioner Matt Jukes also told how hundreds more patrols were being carried out in north London to protect Jewish sites.
The force had surged resources into Golders Green, where two men were recently stabbed, and Stamford Hill, including more armed units and officers with Tasers.
“We've used our specialisms as well to support all of that activity,” DC Jukes told the London Assembly police and crime committee.
“So the teams who are involved typically in manhunt activity, so those who go after our most wanted have gone after our most wanted in relation to hate crime and made arrests.
“For example, in relation to one of the incidents that took place in the weekend's protests that led to an arrest in Plymouth.”
DC Jukes stressed that there had been a “seven-week sustained” attack on the capital’s Jewish community.
The wave of antisemitic incidents includes a string of arsons or attempted arsons at synagogues and Jewish-linked businesses.
“In the last six months we recorded 10,347 hate crime offences...and we have reached a positive outcome, so charges or other criminal justice or related interventions just short of 2000 of those cases, that doubles what we had achieved previously,” DC Jukes said.
He told how spiralling antisemitism incidents meant they were seven times that of the also ‘intolerable’ level of such anti-Muslim offences.
He explained that Jewish communities were facing an “overlapping circle of hatred” in London, which has got so severe that preparations are being made for a possible chemical weapons attack.
“There is hostility from what is characterized as Far Right or extreme Right wing sentiment, there is hostility from so-called Islamist sources, and there is the hostile state intentions, particularly those of the Iranian regime,” he said.
“We are so determined and so clear that, although all communities deserve protection from hate crime, there is a specific moment in time now, and it seems that it will be with us for a period where the Jewish community is at the centre of that overlapping circle of hatred.”
Thirty-five people have been arrested, 11 individuals charged and one convicted in relation to the recent attacks on the Jewish community in the capital.
Scotland Yard has deployed a new Community Protection Team, initially of 100 extra officers, to step up the force’s crackdown on hate crime.
Counter-terrorism police and the security services are investigating whether Iran is behind the attacks on London’s Jewish community, in retaliation for the UK’s involvement in Donald Trump’s Iran war.
They are probing if Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, the Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right, may be recruiting people in London and other parts of the UK to commit these crimes, sometimes for payment of just a few hundred pounds.
They are seeking to establish whether the shadowy group is acting as a proxy for Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps.
Sir Keir Starmer has strongly pointed the finger of blame at Tehran for the attacks.
DC Jukes warned people not to get involved in the antisemitic crimes, stressing: “They are looking at the back of a prison door for many, many years.”
