Jewish London bus passenger says driver trapped him, said he ‘looks like a Mossad agent’
Orthodox Jewish man says he was held on a bus in Hackney for nearly an hour as driver refused to return his bank card; man suspended as police investigate incident as a hate crime
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on GoogleStav Levaton is a military reporter for The Times of Israel
A 52-year-old Orthodox Jewish man says he was trapped on a London bus for nearly an hour after the driver refused to return his bank card and made an antisemitic remark, according to a Friday BBC report.
David Abraham said he boarded the number 149 bus in Stoke Newington Road, Hackney, at 1:35 p.m. GMT on Monday, when he accidentally dropped his card into the driver’s cabin. He told the BBC that the driver refused to give it back, saying, “I don’t like Jewish people, you look like a Mossad agent.”
Abraham said he then called the Metropolitan Police to report the incident.
According to Abraham, when officers arrived, the driver initially refused to allow them to retrieve the card, leaving him trapped, until a police officer eventually opened the driver’s cabin.
Abraham described the experience as frightening and said it had made him “scared” to go out again.
The Metropolitan Police confirmed that while no crime was recorded at the scene, the incident was reported as a hate crime following a report filed by Abraham.
A Jewish man from London dropped his credit card into the driver’s section of a public bus.
Rather than returning it, the driver made ignored the passenger, who was trapped on the bus for hours trying to retrieve his property.
The driver reportedly said that he doesn’t like… pic.twitter.com/dH1E76ZUEa
— Hen Mazzig (@HenMazzig) October 30, 2025
Transport for London (TfL) said it had a “zero-tolerance approach to all forms of abuse” and that the bus driver had been suspended in the wake of the report. The bus operator, Arriva London, said it was taking the matter seriously and would take “all appropriate action” once its internal review is complete.
The incident comes amid rising concerns over antisemitic crime in the UK. Government data released in October showed that Jews suffered the highest rate of religious hate crimes in England and Wales in the year ending March 2025, with 2,873 offenses recorded — equivalent to 106 crimes per 10,000 Jewish people.
Figures from the Community Security Trust, a nonprofit that monitors antisemitic incidents in Britain, recorded 1,521 incidents in the first half of 2025 alone. More than half of these were linked to Israel, Gaza, or the ongoing conflict following the October 2023 Hamas attack, and the period included 76 violent assaults.
Home Secretary Yvette Cooper pledged continued government funding to protect Jewish communities, including £54 million in protective measures through 2028. Nevertheless, studies indicate that concern about antisemitism is affecting British Jews’ sense of security, with many considering leaving the country.
Immigration from the UK to Israel rose from 372 in 2023 to 676 in 2024, with 2025 on pace to match or beat those figures, Sergio Della Pergola, one of Israel’s most respected experts on Jewish demographics, said in September.
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