“It’s everywhere,” Yohai Liberow told Channel 12 News, following not just one but two back-to-back anti-Semitic incidents that occurred in central London on Saturday night. Liberow was rattled, but not surprised at what had happened to him on his way home, on the bus and then on the Underground.
He hadn’t been alone on the bus, but neither his fellow passengers nor the bus driver intervened when a young black man walked up to where he was standing, minding his own business, and started to threaten him.
“I could sense something was a bit off – he was mumbling to himself,” Liberow told Elad Simchayoff, Channel 12’s European correspondent. “Then he approached me and things escalated from there – he started cursing me.”
“You’re a *** Jewish Jew!” the man said.
“He threatened to kill me,” Liberow described. “He said he was going to attack me, and at one point he extended his arm to hit me, and I blocked that.”
Liberow then got out his phone and started to film the attack, which prompted the man to get off the bus and walk away, but not before delivering a parting shot: “I’ll slit your throat for Palestine,” he shouted, while banging on the bus door from the outside.
A short while later, Liberow got off the bus and headed to the Underground to continue his journey. On his way down the escalator, he encountered a group of youths – white, this time – who spotted him and started jeering.
“I hate *** Jews,” one of them said, while the others echoed his sentiments in their own way. Again Liberow decided to video the encounter, and the youths continued to jeer: “Got a Jew behind us!”
“I tried to remain calm, but what disturbs me is that [people like them are] just roaming the streets free, in London,” Liberow told Channel 12. “I’ve experienced similar incidents in the past, many times over. It’s everywhere. People should stand up for themselves when it’s safe to do so, and say something, do something,” he added.