Anti-Semitic attacks in UK up 11% in 2016

Anti-Semitic attacks in the UK rose by 11 per cent in the first six months of this year, a report says.

The Community Security Trust (CST), which works to combat anti-Semitism and racism, said there were 577 incidents targeting Jews, up from 473 in the same period last year.

Almost a quarter of incidents involved the use of social media while more than 75 per cent of the attacks were recorded in London and Manchester.

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"The year-on-year rise comes at a time when politicians and police have warned about growing levels of hate crimes since Britons voted to leave the European Union on June 23," says the Jerusalem Post.

However, the CST rejects any clear link between the Brexit vote and the growth in attacks. Although overall levels of hate crime shot up during the last days of campaigning of the referendum and in the vote's aftermath, spokesman Dave Rich told BuzzFeed News there was no noticeable spike in anti-Semitic incidents in the week after the result.

Nevertheless, there is an acceptance by the CST that the rise in attacks on Jews represents "the new normal", says the Jewish Chronicle. "A series of spikes in anti-Semitism in the past seven years have meant levels have never dropped back to where they were a decade ago," it says.

Perplexingly, ITV News has headlined its report "Fall in anti-Semitic hate crime", choosing to highlight the 54 per cent drop in attacks on Jews in Greater Manchester in the first half of 2016 and ignoring the significant increase in such incidents nationally.

CST's figures come one day after the leak of a report into anti-Semitism at Oxford University's Labour Club which found Jews were ridiculed in a way women or Afro-Caribbean people would not be, Sky News says.