UK anti-Semitic incidents reach all-time high

Anti-Semitic hate crimes have reached a record high in the UK, with almost four attacks on Jewish people logged every day.

A total of 1,382 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in 2017 by the Community Security Trust (CST).

The most common cases involved “verbal abuse directed at random Jewish people in public”, The Guardian reports. There were 356 such incidents, of which at least 283 involved targets who were visibly Jewish, “usually due to their religious or traditional clothing, school uniform or jewellery bearing Jewish symbols”, says The Jewish Chronicle.

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The report by the trust, a charity that monitors anti-Semitism, found no obvious single cause behind the trend. However, “it pointed to a rise in all forms of hate crime after the EU referendum, as well as publicity surrounding alleged anti-Semitism in the Labour Party”, says The Independent.

The 2017 total was the highest annual tally recorded by the charity since it began gathering the data in 1984. The figure was up by 3%, from 1,346, on 2016 - which had also been a record high.

“Hatred is rising and Jewish people are suffering as a result,” said CST chief executive David Delew. “This should concern everybody, because it shows anger and division that threaten all of society. We have the support of government and police, but prosecutions need to be more visible and more frequent.”

Responding to the report, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said that “anti-Semitism is a despicable form of abuse” which has “absolutely no place in British society”.

She added: “I welcome this report’s findings that the rise in reported incidents partly reflects the improving response to these horrendous attacks and better information-sharing between the CST and police forces around the UK.”