Anti-Semitic hate incidents in UK hit record high

Reports of anti-Semitic abuse and attacks in the UK have reached an all-time high, according to a charity that monitors hate crimes.

The Community Security Trust (CST), which has tracked anti-Semitic incidents since 1984, says it received 1,652 reports last year - “a 16% increase on the previous year” and “a record annual total for a third year running”, CNN reports.

The CST’s report for 2018 says the worrying upwards trend “suggests an enduring situation in which people with anti-Semitic attitudes appear to be more confident to express their views”.

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However, the rise could also be explained in part by victims and witnesses feeling “more motivated to report the anti-Semitism they experience or encounter”, the report authors add.

The most common type of incident, accounting for just under a third of the total, involved verbal abuse by a stranger.

In an article for The Jewish Chronicle, CST chief executive David Delew writes that, in contrast to previous spikes in anti-Semitic violence, the recent surge does not appear to be connected to military action involving Israel.

Abuse of British Jews has risen steadily in the past three years, even though “Israel has not been fully at war” during this time, he points out.

Only around one in ten of the anti-Semitic incidents recorded in 2018 had an overly anti-Israel or anti-Zionist overtone, according to the CST report.

A similar proportion of incidents - 148 out of 1,652 - related to the fierce debate about anti-Semitism that has consumed the Labour Party. The majority of these incidents took place online.

“This latest anti-Semitism is about the condition of Britain today,” Delew says.

Communities Secretary James Brokenshire said he was “shocked and saddened” by the “alarming” rise in hate attacks.

“Anti-Semitism may be felt most acutely by the Jewish community, but it is a disgrace that concerns us all,” he continued.

“This Government will always stand together with the British Jewish community to keep them safe, and we will work to ensure that no one is a target for hatred because of their race or religion.”

Last month, a separate CST study found that Google processed more than 170,000 anti-Semitic search terms from users in the UK in 2018.

Such searches - which included phrases such as “kill Jews” and “are Jews evil?” - “rose sharply in the days following Israel’s Eurovision song contest victory last year, and went up 79% in April 2018, when Labour was embroiled in a row over anti-Semitism”, The Guardian reports.