Excerpt:
The backlash in Europe against Israel has been underway since the beginning of Operation Protective Edge. In each country the protests have similarities. And in each they are spear-headed by the same motives and often by the same people.
In London the protests have been dominated young Muslims with the usual smattering of far-left fellow-travellers. They have carried Socialist Worker Party banners saying "Stop Israeli State Terror." But some went off-message, apparently deciding it did not matter if their targets were Israeli or "just" Jews. There have also been the predictable banners comparing Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with Adolf Hitler. Others have a more confused relationship with this sinister conflation. One young protestor was photographed at a demonstration outside the Israeli Embassy in London with a poster saying, "Hitler you were right!" Elsewhere the protests have spilled over into occasional outbursts of violence.
People who are "visibly Jewish," people wearing identifiably Jewish dress, have found themselves targeted for abuse. Demonstrators at the biggest central London march assaulted and verbally abused a Jewish woman who had expressed her support for Israel, calling her a "Jew Zionist" among other things, before stealing her mobile phone. In North London, a rabbi was abused by a group of 'youths' who shouted "F*** the Zionists," "F*** the Jews" and "Allah Akhbar."