Dyfed-Powys Police Sergeant tells CAA that claiming “Jews rip us off” and “Jews f*** us up” is just “stating an opinion”

Campaign Against Antisemitism is making a professional standards complaint with regard to the manner in which a complaint relating to antisemitic hate speech has been handled by an officer from Dyfed-Powys police.

When discussing an allegation against Daniel Davies, the owner of Tribestan UK, for the antisemitic e-mails sent to an Israeli man who attempted to order items from the company, Campaign Against Antisemitism was told that the matter would merely be recorded as a hate incident rather than a hate crime. When pressed on this, the officer said that he had reviewed the complaint, and that it would be recorded as the less serious matter, as the e-mails were simply “stating an opinion”.

One of the e-mails sent by Tribestan UK stated: “Unfortunately Jews have negativity on our businesses. Do you know why? Because Jews rip us off! Jews f*** us up!”

A second e-mail sent a short while later stated: “We don’t ship to Israel because the Jews rob us! Sorry but that’s a fact. They scam the world.”

Mr Davies has claimed that “our e-mail got hacked via wifi over a business phone”, which is a common excuse that we have heard from other companies that have sent antisemitic messages, who later claimed were the work of hackers.

At a time when British Jews are threatened by levels of antisemitism that are unprecedented in the UK since the Second World War, it is alarming and unacceptable that a police officer is incapable of distinguishing between the legitimate expression of a point of view and antisemitic hate speech that has been at the root of much of the persecution suffered by the Jewish people.