Antisemitic incidents – 22 November update

In the 47 days inclusive between the Hamas terror attack on Israel (Saturday 7 October) and Wednesday 22 November, CST recorded at least 1563 antisemitic incidents across the UK. This is the highest ever total reported to CST across a forty-seven-day period. CST has been recording antisemitic incidents since 1984.

In just over six weeks, CST has recorded more antisemitic incidents than the total reported throughout the entire year prior to Hamas’ attack on Israel, between 1 January and 6 October.

This is also a provisional total that is almost certain to increase further as we receive more delayed reports of incidents covering this period, and while we continue to verify and log all the reports that we have currently received.

For comparison, CST recorded 242antisemitic incidents over the same 47 days in 2022. This means that we have seen an increase in anti-Jewish hate acts of 546% this year compared to the same period last year.

These are all instances of anti-Jewish racism, wherein offenders are targeting Jewish people, communities and institutions for their Jewishness. In many cases, these hateful comments, threats to life and physical attacks are laced with the rhetoric and iconography of pro-Palestinian and anti-Israel politics.

Even compared to periods of previous conflicts involving Israel, these statistics are unprecedentedly high. The last time a significant spike in antisemitism related to events in the Middle East was recorded occurred in May 2021. Over the entire month of that conflict, from 8 May – 7 June, 691 instances of anti-Jewish hate were recorded. After 7 June, antisemitic incident levels in the UK returned to what CST would consider a “normal” level (which is still shamefully high, averaging over 100 incidents per month). At present, there is no sign that the volume of anti-Jewish hatred is subsiding to this “normal”.

Across the first 47 days of the conflict in July 2014, we recorded 499 antisemitic incidents. Bear in mind, when comparing these to the 1563 anti-Jewish hate incidents recorded since Saturday 7 October, that the figures for 2021 and 2014 are final totals including all late-reported incidents, whereas the current total of 1563 incidents is only provisional and will almost certainly increase further.

In addition to the 1563 anti-Jewish hate incidents recorded so far, CST also logged at least 1022 incidents that have not been classified as antisemitic. These include criminal acts affecting Jewish people and property, suspicious behaviour near to Jewish locations, and anti-Israel activity that is not directed at the Jewish community or does not use antisemitic language. Many of these potential incidents involve suspicious activity or possible hostile reconnaissance at Jewish locations, and they play an important role in informing CST’s provision of protection to the Jewish community.

The 1563 antisemitic incidents recorded over this forty-day period fall into the following categories:

• 70 Assaults

• 113 Damage & Desecration to Jewish property

• 130 direct Threats

• 1246 Abusive Behaviour, including verbal abuse, graffiti on non-Jewish property, hate mail and online abuse

• 4 instances of mass-produced antisemitic Literature

CST has recorded 881 antisemitic incidents in Greater London; 278 in Greater Manchester; 52 in Hertfordshire; 42 in West Yorkshire; 33 in Scotland; 23 in Thames Valley; 20 in the West Midlands; 18 in Sussex; 15 in Nottinghamshire; 13 in Merseyside; and the remaining 188 incidents were spread across 33 different police regions around the UK.

One thousand and eighty-nine of the 1563 antisemitic incidents occurred offline and 474 were online. Many of the online incidents were ‘pile-ons’ involving multiple antisemitic posts and comments all in the same thread or conversation; CST records these as a single incident.

One hundred and six antisemitic incidents were related to universities across the UK. In the first six months of 2023, CST recorded just 17 incidents of this kind, and 56 in the whole of 2022. Meanwhile, 105 incidents were related to the school sector. Forty-nine of these affected students and teachers at non-Jewish schools; 32 involved Jewish schoolchildren abused on their way to or from school; 18 targeted Jewish schools; and six involved offenders from non-Jewish schools abusing adult members of the public or Jewish locations. Between January and June 2023, 67 incidents in the school sector were reported to CST, and 94 in the whole of 2022.

Whenever Israel is at war, CST records an increase in anti-Jewish hate across the country, and an acute rise is usually reported specifically in and related to places of education.

Examples of antisemitic incidents recorded by CST since Saturday 7 October include:

• Posters of Jewish hostages have been removed or defaced in London, Manchester, Hertfordshire and Leeds

• A man posted a WhatsApp story showing a picture of Adolf Hitler with the words, “I would have killed all the Jews of the world, but I kept some to show the world why I killed them”

• A Jewish girl received a call from an anonymous number, with the caller saying, “F*ck you, you Jewish bitch, posting about Israel, f*ck your mum, f*ck your dad, f*ck your nan”

• A boy ordered food without bacon in London, and a young male looked at him in an intimidating manner and said, “What?! Are you a f*cking Jew”

• A woman at a pro-Palestinian protest in Glasgow was holding a sign saying, “One Holocaust does not justify another”

• In Leeds, a man on the train claimed he was travelling to bomb a synagogue. He was arrested on arrival by the British Transport Police

• A teacher overheard a conversation about Jewish people at school, and one of the boys said, “They should all be gassed”

• A synagogue in Hertfordshire received an anonymous automated male voice call on repeat, saying, “Free Palestine”

• A Jewish man approached somebody he thought he was friendly with at his London gym. The response was, “F*ck off, you Nazi terrorist sympathiser, you people are scum”

• A Jewish man was approached in a London park, where the offender said, “You people are the worst. Why do you think Hitler chucked you out, you crooked-nosed, Zionist c*nt?”

• A phone call was made to a Jewish community organisation in London, and the caller said, “Hitler did not kill enough Jews”

CST will not stand for this anti-Jewish hatred and nor should anybody else. We urge everyone who experiences or witnesses antisemitism to report it to police and to CST so that those who are trying to intimidate and threaten our community can be investigated, arrested and prosecuted.

To report an antisemitic incident to CST, please use our online form or for urgent or out-of-hours reports please call our 24-hour National Emergency Number 0800 032 3263.