Was the Belfast assailant shouting about Jews while allegedly attempting to behead his victim?
We are providing the source video so that you can make up your own mind, but we have pixellated it due to its extremely violent and graphic nature.
Our investigators believe that the assailant in the video is shouting: “Ya yahoodi, Ya yahoodi, ta’al awsif!”, which translates from Arabic as “O Jew, O Jew, come and record/let me show you!”
We have made this assessment with medium confidence (higher confidence on the reference to Jews).
It is not clear whether the reference to ‘Jew’ – which is often used as a derogatory term in Arabic – was being used in relation to the victim or to the onlookers, whom the assailant may have been goading, or whether it was being used more generally as a battlecry.
If this analysis is correct, it would chillingly indicate that there may have been an antisemitic motivation or undertone in this heinous incident, over which Hadi Alodid from Sudan has been charged. At the very least, it indicates that the extremism that is now afflicting us all in the West is strongly related to the explosion of antisemitism that is targeted at Jews.
By failing to crack down on antisemitic extremism, the authorities have permitted an environment of violent hostility to Jews, which has in turn emboldened extremists – both home-grown and imported – to come for us all.
The victim, Stephen Ogilvie, probably had no connection to Judaism whatsoever, until the man allegedly trying to behead him started to shout about Jews.