Last year, on October 8, I walked past a group of anti-Israel protesters on my way into the Labour Party conference. This was before Israel had acted against Hamas in Gaza and the terrible details of the October 7 massacre – the torture, rapes, beheadings and cold-blooded killing of children and elderly people – had just began to unfold. This was not a reaction to Israel’s response, which hadn’t started yet. It was a celebration of the massacre of Jews.
This year, walking the same path into the party conference, I was faced again with anti-Israel protesters. Some have crossed the line from political criticism into outright racism. One placard read ‘Zionists control the Labour Party’ – an antisemitic trope about Jews controlling governments. It had a star of David with blood dripping from it, suggestive of blood libels about Jews that have existed for centuries.
As the Jewish community went into profound, painful, mourning on October 7, antisemitism emerged quick and ferocious. The Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors antisemitism and provides security for the community, reported a record high of 4,103 antisemitic incidents in 2023. This figure shows a dramatic increase from previous years, with 66% of these incidents occurring after October 7. This first recorded incident happened around lunchtime on 7 October, while Israelis were still being massacred by Hamas.
Antisemitism continued to rise in 2024, with 1,978 incidents recorded in the first half of the year – 105% higher than in the same period the previous year. These are only the reported incidents – but many more go unreported.
British Jews have suffered abusive behaviour offline and online, assaults, threats, and damage and desecration of Jewish properties. Terrorism referrals have gone up dramatically. Jewish schools and community centres had to heighten security measures. Jewish children have to get through extensive security to get to school, and practice drills to prepare them for a possible attack.
Jews have encountered antisemitism in all walks of life. On our streets, where people who are visibly Jewish have been verbally and physically abused and threatened. On public transport, where British transport police recorded 87 antisemitic incidents in the month after October 7, compared with just eight in the same time period the previous year. In the NHS, Jewish patients have faced perceived discrimination based on their religion. Schools and universities have also played host to a troubling surge in antisemitic attacks of students, pupils and staff. Jewish students have suffered intimidation, boycotts and marginalisation by their peers. Campus protests have included antisemitic chants and placards; Jews have suffered discrimination and abuse from colleagues or from clients in their places of work. According to a poll from January 2024, 40% of Jews have reportedly experienced antisemitism at a workplace. Jewish authors have reportedly suffered discrimination by UK publishers. One well-known literary agent claimed that half of British publishers are refusing to commission books by authors who are identifiably Jewish.
The pro-Palestinian protests that have taken place nearly every weekend since October 7 regularly exhibit placards with antisemitic slogans, calls for jihad or other forms of violence against Jews. Hundreds have so far been arrested for offences ranging from public order to support for proscribed terror organisations.
Antisemitism has been relentless, and felt devastating for a community suffering from trauma and overwhelming grief. Many Jews feel that they need to disguise their religion in order to be safe. Some 70% of Jewish students feel uncomfortable revealing their religion for fear of harassment and intimidation. Jews feel alienated from their communities. Many of us have lost friends who have been radicalised by antisemitic online misinformation. British Jews, some of whom have never even visited Israel, have been blamed for the actions of the Israeli government.
Anti-Jewish racism has become an acceptable form of bigotry, in a way that other forms of prejudice wouldn’t have been tolerated. For British Jews, it seems that antisemitism has become mainstream and trivialised.
There are fewer than 300,000 Jews in the UK, and the scale of antisemitism has reached us all. As Dr. Dave Rich from CST put it, ‘if education was a simple answer, then there wouldn’t be so much antisemitism at universities’. The answer for rooting out pre-existing stereotypes and bias, and making Jews feel safe again, is more complex, and one that has to be addressed in a comprehensive way – urgently.
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