The latest set of antisemitism figures from the Community Security Trust covering 2025 are depressingly predictable. Last year, saw 3,700 instances of anti-Jewish hate across the UK, the second highest annual total ever reported – second only to the 4,298 antisemitic incidents in 2023.
The figures have rightly been described as appalling by ministers. But this is hypocrisy of the most grotesque kind
The figures conform to a pattern. The worst year on record, 2023, saw the Hamas massacre of 1,200 Jews on 7 October. Last year, the second worst year on record, saw the murders at Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur. In other words, when Jew hate is at its worst – when Jews are murdered – that leads not to a subsequent fall in incidents of Jew hate, in horrified reaction, but to the opposite: a spike. When Jews are murdered, antisemites are inspired.
Last year was the first on record when CST recorded over 200 cases of anti-Jewish hate in every month. But the worst month by far was October, with 463 antisemitic incidents – the fifth highest monthly total ever logged by CST and a 63 per cent increase on the September figure. Jews were murdered, so antisemitism rose. On the day of the murders 40 cases were logged, with another 40 the following day. As the CST puts it: ‘Over half of these 80 incidents were antisemitic reactions to the violence, celebrating it, dismissing it, or spinning conspiratorial narratives about it. A smaller spike was recorded in December following the Islamic State‑inspired attack at a Chanukah event in Bondi Beach, Australia. When Jewish communities are perceived to be vulnerable, antisemites take the opportunity to pile on with their hatred.’
None of this happens in a vacuum. The figures have rightly been described as appalling by ministers. But this is hypocrisy of the most grotesque kind. It is the same ministers – and, to be fair, this was also true under the Conservatives – who have stood by and watched as Jew hate is paraded on the streets of Britain through the regular hate marches. The fact these marches are still taking place shows how baseless their claim to be about Gaza always was. The Gaza war is over. But the hate marches continue, with tens and hundreds of thousands still taking to the streets with their chants of ‘globalise the intifada’ – kill the Jews, in other words.
Jew haters are inspired and encouraged when they see Jew hate – which is why the marches are so poisonous and why it was so important to tackle the antisemitic slogans and chanting from the start. Instead it was ignored, with the police standing and watching and the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) refusing to prosecute. That is a large factor behind why we are where we now are.
Add to this the repeated refusal of the authorities even to criticise, let alone tackle, the tide of antisemitic sermons which some mosques not only permit, but proudly publish online, and it is no wonder that antisemitism is rising.
There are few sentences which stick in the craw more than that ubiquitous bromide, ‘There is no place for antisemitism in Britain’ which is trotted out whenever the latest antisemitic incident is reported or the latest set of figures are published. Those incidents and these figures show how meaningless that is – there is, as the evidence shows, a very large place for antisemitism in Britain.
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