Month of Hate: UK Saw ‘Most Intense Period of Anti-Jewish Hate’ During Israel-Hamas Conflict

Pro-Palestinian activists and supporters let off smoke flares, wave flags and carry placar
TOLGA AKMEN/AFP via Getty Images
Victoria Friedman

Jewish people saw “the most intense period of anti-Jewish hate” in the UK in recent years, most of which involved language, behaviour, or imagery linked to the conflict between Israel and the Palestinian terror group Hamas.

The British Jewish charity, the Community Security Trust (CST), which has been recording antisemitic incidents since 1984, released a report on Thursday exposing what it described as the “unprecedented wave of antisemitism” between May 8th and June 7th, during and after the conflict in the Middle East.

Entitled The Month of Hate, the CST revealed during this time, it recorded 628 antisemitic hate incidents, the highest the charity had ever recorded in a month-long period, and four times the number of incidents to be expected for the period.

“This was the most intense period of anti-Jewish hatred seen in the UK in recent years. It saw record levels of antisemitic hate incidents, anti-Jewish chants and placards on public demonstrations, incitement from radical Islamist extremists in the UK and calls from jihadist terrorist groups for Jews to be killed.

“All this was fuelled by, or tried to take advantage of, antisemitic reactions to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and other militant groups in Gaza,” CST said in a blog post.

Of the 628 incidents, 585 (93 per cent) “involved language, imagery or behaviour linked to the conflict in Israel and Gaza”. Such incidents included people shouting “Free Palestine!” and/or waving Palestinian flags at random Jewish people in manners that the charity said clearly were meant to target Jews and do so in an abusive way.

One incident that did garner a large amount of media attention was after a weekend anti-Israel protest where a convoy of activists drove through London waving Palestinian flags while one man shouted: “Fuck the Jews”, “Fuck their mothers”, “Fuck their daughters”, and “Rape their daughters”.

The charity noted that it was worrying the number of incidents related to education, with 25 per cent of incidents connected to Jewish school children and teachers, schools, and universities.

Several anti-Israel protests across the UK at that time also included antisemitic placards, according to the CST, with speakers at times instigating acts of anti-Jewish hate. In one instance, a speaker at a protest in Manchester espoused the conspiracy theory that Jews control the media, saying: “The main 13 executives that approve the content released by the BBC are actually in fact Jewish. So this means the information released by the mainstream media will be biased.”

Another speaker at a Bradford demonstration “recited an explicitly anti-Jewish prayer in Arabic”, the CST said, with the lines of the prayer being repeated back by people in the crowd.

On the same day that the CST report was released, a member of the Greater London Authority (GLA) Conservatives published data obtained from London’s Metropolitan Police Service that revealed in May there were 252 antisemitic incidents reported in the city — more than three times higher than in the month before — but the number of arrests related to the incidents was only 15.

During Mayor’s Question Time at City Hall, police had been accused of taking a “hands off” approach to stopping those spouting the antisemitic abuse.

Susan Hall, Leader of the GLA Conservatives, said, according to the Evening Standard: “Shamefully, Met Police data confirms Jewish Londoners’ fear that officers are just standing by when it comes to anti-Semitism on our city’s streets. Far from arresting these hateful thugs after the event, as Sadiq Khan claimed, the proportion of arrests fell while offences soared.”

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