UK anti-Semitic incidents at a high, says report

More anti-Semitic incidents were reported in the UK last year than in any year since 1984, says a Jewish community organisation. The Community Security Trust provides security for the Jewish community and monitors anti-Semitism.

The Trust began monitoring such incidents in 1984 – and this year has logged more instances than ever. The 1,168 total for 2014 is double the previous year's tally, says the BBC.

The offenders in around half the 2014 incidents mentioned Gaza or Palestinians, says the Trust, but there had already been a sharp rise in the first half of the year, before the summer's shelling of Gaza by Israeli troops and Palestinian rocket attacks.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up

Of the 1,168 incidents, 81 were violent assaults. One, in London last September, was classified as "extreme" with the victim hit with a glass and a baseball bat, as well as being subjected to verbal abuse.

Around 300 were instances of verbal abuse apparently randomly directed at Jewish people in public. There were 19 incidents where objects – usually eggs – were thrown at "visibly Jewish" people from cars, says the Trust.

There were eight assaults on worshippers going to or from synagogues and four targeted Jewish children on their way to or from school. There was also a growth of online abuse – 233 cases on social media, compared to 88 in 2013, the group said.

The report also mentions incidences of anti-Semitic graffiti on homes – and desecrations of cemeteries, including one in Manchester last February where 'Jewish slag' was daubed on gravestones.

Rabbi Avraham Pinter, a leading figure in Britain's largest, most visible Jewish community – the Stamford Hill Haredi in London – said he had been "overwhelmed" by the support many people, especially other faith groups, had offered after an anti-Semitic poster appeared on Facebook.

The poster, put up by a far-right activist, detailed a planned protest against "Jewification" in Stamford Hill next month. Pinter told the BBC that some in the Stamford Hill community feared such a rally could inflame tensions.