Police in Cambridgeshire, United Kingdom, refused to arrest a man who sent Nazi swastikas to Jewish students, the Telegraph reported on Saturday.
The suspect sent an image of the Star of David mixed with the Nazi swastika on social media to the Union of Jewish Students with the caption “The irony of becoming what you once hated.”
The offender wrote there was “nothing endangering Jewish students” and claimed that the UJS was “exploiting them to push pro-genocide propaganda and deflect Israel’s responsibility for murdering 40,000 civilians”.
Still, the Cambridgeshire police force deemed the antisemitic act not offensive enough to be a crime.
The Telegraph reported that the incident was labeled as a non-crime hate incident (NCHI).
According to Alex Hearn, co-director of Labour Against Anti-Semitism, this isn’t the first antisemitic incident against the UJS that was reported to the Cambridgeshire police. In October, a man used X/Twitter to send offensive messages to him and the Jewish students.
Similarly, this incident was labeled as non-criminal. An officer’s emailed response read that according to UK law, a digital message had to be “grossly offensive … a very high legal threshold to pass.”
Hearn responded, saying, “I fail to see how posting the image of race-hate swastika at Jews is not grossly offensive, particularly when the Met Police are arresting people for holding exactly that image,” the Telegraph quoted.
UK antisemitism
In April, a protester carrying a swastika sign was arrested at a Pro-Palestinian march in London on Saturday, but the outrage was sparked by a video in which a Metropolitan Police officer told a pro-Israel counter-protester that that the swastika sign had to be taken in context.
“The law is very clear – anyone displaying symbols, wording or otherwise indicating their support for a proscribed organization risks arrest,” the Metropolitan Police wrote.
The officer claimed he wasn’t sure how “everybody would feel about that sign.”
In October, antisemitic words and signs were found written in the sand of Hendon Golf Club in North London, which has a significant Jewish population.
Additionally, on the anniversary of the October 7 massacre, tens of thousands of pro-Palestine protesters marched through London holding banners expressing support for Hezbollah and Hamas, as well as several signs depicting the star in the Israeli flag replaced with a Nazi swastika.
During the protest, officers made 17 arrests, according to the Met, including one person on suspicion of supporting a proscribed organization.