Greater Manchester has seen a 159% rise in anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of this year.
A report out today from the Community Security Trust said that there 181 incidents and 13% of those incidents were assaults or extreme violence.
Across the U.K there was a record total of 1,308 antisemitic incidents in the first six months of 2021 due to the spike in anti-Jewish hate reported during and following the escalation in violence in Israel and Gaza.
CST recorded 748 antisemitic incidents in Greater London, an increase of 51% from the 496 incidents recorded in London in the first half of 2020
In May 2021, the month when the conflict in the Middle East intensified, CST recorded a monthly record of 639 antisemitic incidents.
This accounts for 49% the 1,308 antisemitic incidents recorded in the first half of 2021, and would, on its own, constitute a record half-year tally in every year prior to 2017.
The most common type of language or imagery used in antisemitic incidents over the first six months of 2021 referenced the conflict in the Middle East, demonstrated anti-Zionist political motivation, or both.
This type of discourse was present on 693 occasions, compared with 151 in the first half of 2020 – a year without a significant trigger event from the Middle East.
Forty-three incidents directly compared Israel with Nazi Germany, while the terms “Zionism” or “Zionist” were employed in 68 incidents, often as euphemisms for “Jewishness” and “Jew”. There were 277 incidents in which offenders used far right or Nazi-related discourse, of which 59 incidents evidenced far right political motivation.
The surge in incidents correlating with conflict in the Middle East also coincided with the relaxation of COVID-19 restrictions, and continued a pattern in which the peaks and troughs of recorded antisemitism corresponded with the severity of governmental restrictions on public or collective activity.
In January 2021 just 89 antisemitic incidents were reported to CST, the lowest monthly total recorded since December 2017 (86 incidents) and only the second month since then in which CST recorded fewer than 100 antisemitic incidents, with December 2020 (90 incidents) the other.
In contrast, May saw the relaxation of many pandemic-related restrictions. It is possible that the loosening of social regulations, coinciding with the war in Israel and Gaza – a subject that triggers strong emotional responses – provided people with a potential release from months of lockdown-induced frustration.
The pandemic has led those who wish to spread anti-Jewish hate to find new ways of doing so. In the first half of 2021, CST received 13 reports of video conferencing events being hijacked with antisemitic material.
These ‘Zoombombings’ were unheard of prior to the COVID-19 outbreak, but quickly became a method by which antisemites could take advantage of the new social reality; there were ten such incidents between January and June 2020. CST recorded 41 incidents containing antisemitic rhetoric alongside reference to the pandemic, rising from the 26 such cases reported over the same period in 2020. These range from conspiracy theories about Jewish involvement in creating and spreading COVID-19 (or the ‘myth’ of COVID-19) for malevolent and financial benefit; to simply wishing and hoping that Jewish people catch the virus and die from it; to offensively misappropriating Holocaust-era imagery.
HM Government’s Independent Adviser on Antisemitism, Lord Mann, said:
“The scale and intensity of this rise in antisemitism will shock and abhor people across Britain. Many parents will worry about the dramatic increase in hate in educational settings. Please be reassured that my office will continue to work tirelessly to see antisemitism more widely understood and relentlessly opposed, be it on campus or off. I will continue to work with CST which acts as a model for the world in recording, analysing and acting upon this vile racism.”
DCC Mark Hamilton, the National Policing Lead for hate crime, said:
“A huge rise in antisemitic hate crime in the UK at a time of conflict in the Middle East is shocking, but sadly not surprising, as we saw a similar response in 2014. When that earlier tension dissipated, we sought to learn from the challenges here and amongst the lessons we took from that experience was the importance of proactive work with affected communities and the value of effective partnerships. The Community Security Trust is an invaluable ally of the police at a local and national level and we quickly gathered together as tensions rose in 2021, seeking to reassure affected communities and to prevent hate crime. It was depressing to hear of the incidents of violence and the threats made to UK communities, who clearly have no involvement in the events unfolding in another continent.
