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London police officer sparks outrage after suggesting swastikas should be ‘taken into context’ to Jewish woman

Video of a police officer in London having a heated discussion with a woman about the offensiveness of swastikas has circulated across social media.

The video was taken on Saturday during a massive pro-Palestinian rally that the Metropolitan Police were monitoring. In the video, a visibly upset woman confronted the officer about an anti-Israeli participant who allegedly showed off a swastika.

The officer did not seem to agree that swastikas are offensive symbols that threaten public order. He cited the Public Order Act 2023, which he said outlines and limits what police handle at protests.

“Under what context is a swastika not disrupting public order?” the woman argued. She repeated her question multiple times.

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Police standing in London — Lines of police keep the Ceasefire Now protest and the pro-Israel counter demonstration apart on March 30, 2024, in London, England.

“I haven’t said anything about it, that it is or it isn’t,” he replied. “Everything needs to be taken into context, doesn’t it?”

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“Yeah, but it’s a context of a hateful march,” another woman chimed in, while the first woman shot back, “Why does a swastika need context?”

“Why is a swastika not immediately antisemitism?” the woman added. “Why does it need context? This is what I’m confused about. This isn’t even about Israel. In what context is a swastika not antisemitic and disruptive to public order?”

“I don’t have an in-depth knowledge of signs and symbols,” the officer said. “I know the swastika was used by the Nazi Party during their inception and their period of being in power in Germany.”

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Palestinian flags in London — Pro-Palestinian activists and supporters wave flags as they gather for a protest in Trafalgar Square in central London on March 30, 2024, calling for a ceasefire in the Israel/Hamas conflict.

The two continued arguing before the officer acknowledged that some symbols produce “mass alarm.”

“Now, if you came up to me and you felt mass alarm and distressed about a symbol that someone was…,” he said before being interrupted.

“I’m extremely distressed. I’m very alarmed,” the woman responded.

On X, the Metropolitan Police posted a statement about the incident that implied the video had been taken out of context.

“The video is a short excerpt of what was a 10-minute conversation with an officer,” the response read. “During the full conversation, the officer establishes that the person the woman was concerned about had already been arrested for a public order offence in relation to a placard.”

Shot of anti-Israel demonstrators — Protestors on the Ceasefire now protest react to a pro-Israel counter demonstration on March 30, 2024 in London, England.

“The officer then offered to arrange for other officers to attend and accompany the woman to identify any other persons she was concerned about amongst the protestors, but after turning to speak to his supervisor, she then unfortunately left.”

After the video was posted, social media users criticized the police officer’s responses to the woman’s arguments.

“That officer is qualified to be an Ivy League university president,” one X user joked.

“Our police force have reached a new low,” a British commentator wrote.

“And his grandfather probably risked his life fighting the Nazis in World War II. What a shame,” another speculated.

Fox News Digital reached out to the Metropolitan Police for additional comment.

Original article source: London police officer sparks outrage after suggesting swastikas should be ‘taken into context’ to Jewish woman

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Biden admin has no plans to change how it treats Haitian migrants despite outrage from advocates

The Biden administration is under increasing pressure from human rights organizations to rethink its treatment of Haitian migrants trying to flee Haiti or currently living undocumented inside the U.S., but so far there are no plans to change course, three U.S. officials told NBC News.

More than 480 human rights organizations sent a letter to the Biden administration on Wednesday asking for a moratorium on deportations to Haiti, the immediate release of detained Haitian migrants, the closure of pending deportation cases for Haitian migrants and a new designation of Temporary Protected Status that would let more Haitian migrants already living in the U.S. remain in the U.S.

“If the United States cannot keep its personnel safe in Haiti, then the Haitian government is unlikely to keep Haitian nationals safe,” said the letter, referring to the U.S. mission to airlift Americans out of Haiti.

For more on this story, tune in to NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt tonight at 6:30 p.m. ET/5:30 p.m. CT or check your local listings.

U.S. officials say there has been moral handwringing inside the administration, both at the White House and the Department of Homeland Security, over the issue.

“It’s heartbreaking,” one U.S. official said, adding that there are no plans to allow more Haitian migrants into the U.S.

“There are no good options here,” said another U.S. official.

The Biden administration is facing sharp backlash on its immigration policies, including from some Democratic mayors, heading into the November presidential election. Customs and Border Protection has made more than 10 million apprehensions of undocumented migrants trying to cross the southern border since the beginning of the administration, many of them Haitian. Crossings hit record monthly levels in late 2023, though they have now dropped.

Since gangs took over Haiti this month, forcing Prime Minister Ariel Henry to announce his resignation, the Caribbean nation has been engulfed in violence.

The charred remains of vehicles in Port-au-Prince, Haiti, on March 25, 2024.Clarens Siffroy / AFP – Getty Images

The Biden administration has not deported Haitian migrants back to their home country by plane since the violence began, in large part because the airport in the capital and largest city, Port-au-Prince, has been taken over by gangs. But it has continued sending migrants who are interdicted at sea back to Haiti by boat.

On March 14, the U.S. Coast Guard returned 65 Haitians found on a sailboat at sea.

“Those interdicted at sea are subject to immediate repatriation pursuant to our longstanding policy and procedures,” a spokeswoman for DHS said. “The United States returns or repatriates migrants interdicted at sea to The Bahamas, Cuba, the Dominican Republic, and Haiti.”

A spokeswoman for the White House’s National Security Council said the Biden administration’s approach is to help Haitians pave a path to democracy.

“If our goal was to bring everyone from around the world whenever there’s a crisis, we would have a huge problem,” the NSC spokeswoman said.

She noted that the U.S. has been working to help the situation for over a year. The U.S. government has provided more than $170 million in humanitarian aid since October 2022, making it the single largest humanitarian assistance provider to Haiti.

No protected status

Two U.S. officials told NBC News that the Biden administration will not change the policy of returning Haitians interdicted at sea because they do not want to trigger mass migration.

The officials also said that the current crisis has not yet spurred the U.S. to consider granting Temporary Protected Status (TPS) to an additional group of undocumented Haitians.

TPS has historically been used to let nationals from a country facing a humanitarian crisis legally live and work inside the U.S, whether the crisis at home is due to political upheaval or a natural disaster. TPS is granted by the president.

Many Haitian migrants who arrived in the U.S. in the past already have TPS, including those who came after Haiti’s 2010 earthquake.

Advocates for Haitian refugees argue the administration set a double standard by granting TPS to a new group of Venezuelans last summer, when conditions in Venezuela were less dire than the current situation in Haiti.

People, including many Haitians, leave Mexico to cross into the United States on March 13, 2024, in Tijuana, Mexico.Gregory Bull / AP file

The fear of using TPS for Haitians now, two officials said, is that it will send the wrong message to Haitians that they will be allowed to stay in the U.S. if they can make it here. But, they acknowledged, it is a terribly violent situation to which to return anyone.

“There’s an acknowledgement this is really difficult,” said a U.S. official. “But we don’t want to encourage more people to take to the sea.”

Guerline Jozef, a human rights advocate and co-founder of the Haitian Bridge Alliance, which led the letter sent Wednesday, said the Biden administration should rethink its policy. She said accepting desperate migrants who are lucky enough to escape would not trigger mass migration because it is so hard to get out.

“It is almost impossible to leave Haiti,” Jozef said.

U.S. officials noted that those recently interdicted at sea are not being sent back to Port-au-Prince, where most of the violence is concentrated, but in other parts of Haiti like the northern city of Cap-Haïtien.

“There is no excuse to send anyone to anywhere in Haiti right now. They are using this as an excuse for the inexcusable,” Jozef said. “The whole country is unstable.”

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UN chief says it’s time to ‘truly flood’ Gaza with aid and calls starvation there an outrage

RAFAH CROSSING, Egypt — U.N. Secretary-General António Guterres stood near a long line of waiting trucks Saturday and declared it was time to “truly flood Gaza with lifesaving aid,” calling the starvation inside the enclave a “moral outrage.” He urged an immediate cease-fire between Israel and Hamas.

Guterres spoke on the Egyptian side of the border not far from the southern Gaza city of Rafah, where Israel plans to launch a ground assault despite widespread warnings of a potential catastrophe. More than half of Gaza’s population has taken refuge there.

“Any further onslaught will make things even worse — worse for Palestinian civilians, worse for hostages and worse for all people in the region,” Guterres said.

He spoke a day after the U.N. Security Council failed to reach consensus on the wording of a U.S.-sponsored resolution supporting “an immediate and sustained cease-fire.”

Guterres repeatedly noted the difficulties of getting aid into Gaza, for which international aid agencies have largely blamed Israel.

“Here from this crossing, we see the heartbreak and heartlessness … a long line of blocked relief trucks on one side of the gates, the long shadow of starvation on the other,” he said.

About 7,000 aid trucks are waiting in Egypt’s North Sinai province to enter Gaza, Gov. Mohammed Abdel-Fadeil Shousha said in a statement.

Guterres added: “It is time for an ironclad commitment by Israel for total … access for humanitarian goods to Gaza, and in the Ramadan spirit of compassion, it is also time for the immediate release of all hostages.” He later told journalists that a humanitarian cease-fire and hostage release should occur at the same time.

Hamas is believed to be holding around 100 hostages as well as the remains of 30 others taken in its Oct. 7 attack that killed about 1,200 people, mostly civilians, and sparked the war.

When asked about Guterres’ comments, the office of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu referred to a social media post by Foreign Minister Israel Katz accusing the U.N. chief of allowing the world body to become “antisemitic and anti-Israeli.”

An estimated 1.5 million Palestinians now shelter in Rafah after fleeing Israel’s offensive elsewhere.

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Thursday said an Israeli ground assault on Rafah would be “a mistake” and unnecessary in defeating Hamas. That marked a shift in the position for the United States, whose officials have concluded there is no credible way for getting civilians out of harm’s way.

Netanyahu has vowed to press forward with military-approved plans for the offensive, which he has said is crucial to achieving the stated aim of destroying Hamas. The military has said Rafah is Hamas’ last major stronghold and ground forces must target four battalions remaining there.

Again on Saturday night, Israelis protested in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem against Netanyahu and the government amid fears that surviving hostages held in Gaza are in ever-worsening conditions months into the war.

Israel’s invasion has killed more than 32,000 people, according to Gaza health officials, while leaving much of the enclave in ruins and displacing some 80% of the enclave’s 2.3 million people. Gaza’s Health Ministry said Saturday that the bodies of 72 people killed had been brought to hospitals in the past 24 hours.

The Health Ministry doesn’t differentiate between civilians and combatants, but has said women and children make up the majority of the dead. Israel blames Hamas for civilian deaths and accuses it of operating within residential areas.

Fighting raged Saturday around Gaza’s largest hospital. Israel’s military says it has killed more than 170 militants in Shifa hospital since its raid began Monday, and the commanding officer of the Southern Command, Yaron Finkelman, on Friday said “we will finish this operation only when the last terrorist is in our hands.”

Nearby Gaza City residents told The Associated Press that Israeli troops had blown up several residential buildings.

“They are emptying the whole area,” said Abdel-Hay Saad, who lives on the western edge of Gaza City’s Rimal neighborhood. Another resident, Mohammed al-Sheikh, said that intense Israeli bombardment was “hitting anything moving.”

Associated Press footage showed columns of smoke billowing over the hospital area.

The Health Ministry said five wounded Palestinians trapped at Shifa had died without food, water, medical services. It previously said Israel’s military had detained health workers, patients and relatives inside the complex. The military claimed it wasn’t harming civilians, patients or workers.

“These conditions are utterly inhumane,” the World Health Organization’s director-general, Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, said on social media late Friday,

Elsewhere, an older woman and five children were killed overnight in an Israeli airstrike on an area between Rafah and Khan Younis, health authorities said.

Hunger has become deadly, too. The U.N. and Israel’s government again traded allegations over the lack of aid delivery to northern Gaza, the first target of Israel’s offensive in the war and where anguished parents have reported watching children scavenge for bread in the rubble.

The U.N. agency for Palestinian refugees — “the backbone of assistance in Gaza,” Guterres said — said Israel had again denied permission for an aid convoy to deliver to northern Gaza. The agency, known as UNRWA, said that two months have passed since a convoy could reach there.

Israel’s government replied by contending again that hundreds of aid trucks are waiting for the U.N. and partners to distribute it.

“No time for misinformation. Enough,” UNRWA’s communications director, Juliette Touma, told AP in response.

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