Anti-Semitic views held by half of Britons, poll suggests

Almost half of the British population holds anti-Semitic views, a new survey commissioned by the Campaign against Anti-Semitism (CAA) has found.

The You Gov poll found that 45 per cent of people agreed with at least one anti-Jewish statement, with 13 per cent of those surveyed believing that "Jews talk about the holocaust too much in order to get sympathy".

A further 25 per cent agreed with the statement that "Jews chase money more than other British people", while one in five believed that "Jews' loyalty to Israel makes them less loyal to Britain than other British people".

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"These results are shocking wake-up call straight after the atrocities in Paris," Gideon Falter from the CAA told The Independent. "Britain is at a tipping point: unless anti-Semitism is met with zero tolerance, it will grow and British Jews will increasingly question their place in their own country."

A separate study revealed that 54 per cent of British Jews feared that they had no future in the UK and more than a quarter had considered leaving the country. Last year the Jewish Agency reported a 20 per cent increase in British immigrants to Israel.

Anti-Semitic attacks in the UK have increased in recent years, with both verbal and physical attacks reaching the highest level in three decades last year, following the conflict in Gaza.

Security has been stepped up at Jewish locations across Britain in the wake of the attack on a Kosher grocery story in Paris last week.

Dave Rich, from The Community Security Trust (CST), a security organisation that monitors anti-semitic hate crime and helps protect Jewish places of worship said that Britain's Jewish population is worried.

"They have seen what has happened in Paris as an indication of how things could potentially get here if the situation gets worse," he said.

While he acknowledged that British Jews do not experience the level of hostility as those in France, "there is an element of fear that that it could happen here and we must do our outmost to unite and stand against it," he warned.