Outsiders?

Jonathan Freedland here is wringing his hands about an egg-throwing attack on a group of Jews mourning the dead of a V2 bombing of an east end (of London) tenement block. Freedland was there to witness the attack and revisited the area a few days later. Curiously it's the first time I have seen it said that the attack wasn't simply on Oona King or even on her at all. She said that the objects were aimed at her but missed. There were hints from certain quarters, that Respect was responsible. Freedland interviewed two locals about the incident.

"And it's nothing to do with Iraq or Palestine or anything to do with religion," he said.

Instead, Syed explained, the area was overcrowded and rundown. "There's a lot of aggression." The result is that when the police show up they get pelted. If even a resident drives in with a newly clean car, he'll get "egged". Here was a group of outsiders, so they got the treatment too. His friend Bokkar Ali added: "They're just kids having a laugh. They do it to everyone."

Except the culprits did not look like kids; most seemed to be in their late teens or 20s. And there's the testimony of Aminur Rahman, 18, who told me: "There's a lot of hatred towards the Jewish. We've got hatred towards them." He knew Sunday's group were Jewish because of the skullcaps and he knew the story of the 1945 bomb. So was it wrong to attack people who were grieving? "It was wrong in a way, but I think they deserved it because they came into a Muslim community."

As a commenter to this post (before I edited it) said, Freedland is genuinely trying to get to the bottom of what happened, rather than using it as a baton with which to beat Muslims and/or Respect. He's to be thanked for putting the sorry matter into some kind of perspective.