Surge in anti-Semitic incidents in UK over past year: Charity
Al Jazeera
More than 5,500 cases of abusive behaviour recorded since war broke out on October 7, the highest-ever yearly tally.
The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United Kingdom has soared since Israel launched its assault on Gaza in response to the Hamas-led attack on October 7, 2023, according to a Jewish charity.
The Community Security Trust (CST), which monitors anti-Semitism in the UK, released its latest figures on Wednesday, reporting 5,583 anti-Semitic incidents across the country between October 7, 2023 and September 30, 2024 – the highest tally recorded in any 12-month period since it began its count in 1984.
In the month of October 2023 alone, following Hamas’s attack on Israel – in which at least 1,139 people were killed and around 250 were taken as captives, sparking Israel’s retaliatory war on Gaza – the charity logged 1,400 anti-Semitic incidents.
CST said that anti-Semitism had gone up 204 percent compared to the previous year, stating in a report focused on the months between January and June that the “unprecedented” spike in abusive behaviour was caused by people directing “their anger over this geopolitical conflict towards British Jews”.
“When conflict rages in Israel, anti-Jewish hate rises in the UK,” the charity said on X, alongside a breakdown of its figures, adding that reports of anti-Semitism had been “flooding in” even before Israel’s military retaliation.
