False alarm as terror attack turns out to be TV licensing men
Hendon Jews held a vigil last night until, that is, news reached them that the terror attack they thought they were experiencing was actually a TV licensing van.
Helen Goldstein from Hendon Court said she heard screaming coming from her neighbours on both sides and was terrified when she heard the bell ringing at 8:45pm on Friday night ‘We were just tucking into our chicken soup and kneidlach when the doorbell rang, I knew it was something serious because everyone in Hendon knows not to ring the doorbell on Shabbes. We waited ten minutes and escaped the house through the side passage just like my Zeida taught me, then we saw the vans and we thought they’d come for us.
Goldstein and others gathered in the local shul hall at 9:30pm for what they thought was a vigil to pray for the safety of the community under attack but which turned out to have been a l’chayim for Mordechai Cohen’s grandson’s Bar Mitzvah.
Cohen says ‘I thought they all came for the l’chayim, we started to run out of whisky until I realised they were all escaping from terrorists’.
Worry over possible terrorist attacks in the minds of Hendon Jews is rampant, with local services unable to provide enough psychotherapists and chemists running low on valium.
Moishe Shtuplr another local resident commented ‘every time I hear a Jew has been killed somewhere else in the world, I know I’m next’. When informed that the attack was actually simply the TV licensing people, Shtuplr commented ‘have you seen the prices? This is terrorism’.
The TV licensing team had been given a tip-off that many local religious Jews do actually have TV’s but they refer to them as ‘microwaves’ so as to get their children into religious schools in the area.
