Jewish man, 52, is beaten by two men after stopping anti-Israel graffiti in Holborn as Met launches hate crime probe

From the Newshound archive · first published 8 October 2026 · last updated 9 October 2026.

Dan Levene suffered head wounds and a suspected broken rib after confronting two men stencilling a slogan branding Labour's Holborn and St Pancras by-election candidate Sagal Abdi-Wali a "puppet of genocidal Israel" on the cobblestones of Queen Square in central London. Levene kicked the stencil away, told the men their message was "neo-Nazi propaganda," and was punched and kicked to the ground for roughly 20 seconds before two bystanders intervened. The Metropolitan Police is now treating the incident as an antisemitic hate crime.

The attack happened the day before the third anniversary of the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel, and on the eve of the Holborn and St Pancras by-election triggered by Sir Keir Starmer's resignation as an MP.

Levene said he believes the graffiti was linked to the Green Party's motion declaring Zionism to be racism, and blamed what he described as Green Party supporters for the assault.

'It is a worrying and scary time to be Jewish,' Levene said, adding that the graffiti echoed "the message of the Nazis that Jewish people escaped in the middle of the last century."