An 8-year-old Jewish boy was beaten in the London’s Stamford Hill neighborhood on Monday, the second attack in the Jewish neighborhood in less than a month.
The local Shomrim security organization described the incident, which occurred as the child made his way home from school, in a series of tweets.
"The young boy described how a white man wearing gloves attacked him from behind, pushed him to the wall and beat him severely. The boy escaped after 2 people came to his rescue & chased away the suspect. The child ran home & up all the stairs before collapsing. He was crying and couldn't talk for the next 4.5 hours...The young boy was taken to hospital due to swelling and marks near his chest, neck, shoulder and face.”
Speaking to the Jewish Chronicle, Shomrim’s Shaye Gluck said that the "vicious attack” has "affected this young boy's life severely.”
"He keeps on having flashbacks and goes into shock mode where he loses his speech again,” Gluck said. "It is unacceptable that children can no longer walk home from school safely. Shomrim volunteers have increased patrols in the local area and are scouring through hours of CCTV.”
In late August, two teenaged girls were accosted in Stamford Hill in an incident described by Shomrim as an “unprovoked anti-Semitic attack”.
According to the Jewish Chronicle, the girls were approached by a man who threw a glass bottle at them and screamed “Hitler is a good man; good he killed the Jews.” They immediately ran back into their house in the predominantly Hasidic Jewish neighborhood.
"The incident has left the victims badly shaken,” a police spokesman told the Metro newspaper. "The suspect is described as being a light skinned black male in his early twenties, with a slim build and was wearing a black t-shirt, black trousers and wearing a black cross body bag.”
Shomrim has recently tweeted images of anti-Semitic graffiti in Stamford Hill.
"This was a terrifying experience for the young victims who were targeted in this unprovoked anti-Semitic attack,” Chaim Hochhauser of Shomrim told the Jewish Chronicle.
“Shomrim will continue to assist and support the victims. There have been many antisemitic incidents in Stamford Hill recently, and it just seems to be getting worse."
The United Kingdom saw a record number of anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2017, the Community Security Trust announced in late July, eliciting strong reactions from the British Jewish community.
In its report, the British watchdog group cited a 30 percent rise in incidents over the same period last year, with more than 100 incidents monthly, continuing "an unprecedented pattern of monthly totals higher than 100 incidents for every month since April 2016." All told, there were 767 incidents between January and June.
