British Jews feel threatened daily. It’s time for the silent majority to speak out, loud and clear

SATURDAY morning. A visibly Jewish man is walking home from a Sabbath morning service when a group of people attending a pro-palestinian rally approach him and shout: “We are going to rape your mother, you dirty Jew.” A physical assault follows.

In Hertfordshire, the head teacher of a Jewish school receives this racist threat: “Beware. Jihad is being fought and you are going to have your throat slit by us.” The threats also refer to “beheadings and Intifada”, along with the genocidal phrase “from the river to the sea”, now commonly heard.

In London, a Jewish man is having a haircut in a barbershop and hears this exchange between two other customers: “Maybe Hitler was right, he knew what he knew.”

Today, the Community Security Trust, a charity which monitors anti-semitism and provides security for the Jewish community, has released its report on anti-semitic incidents in Britain last year. It makes for highly disturbing reading. The nationwide figure, in 2023, was by far the highest ever recorded. Synagogues were targeted, cemeteries desecrated.

It is vitally important to pinpoint exactly when this rise began. The trigger was not Israel’s military response to the Hamas attacks but the massacre of Jews itself on Oct 7. The first reported anti-semitic incident inspired by the Hamas attacks occurred while the pogrom in Israel was still taking place. In the days that followed, celebrations of the murder of Jewish women, children and the elderly took place on Britain’s streets. Rape and killing became a source of pride, not shame and, for the first time, anti-semitic incidents were recorded in every police region. It appears nowhere is free from Jew-hate.

What does this tell us about what is happening in our country? First, it should be understood that many British Jews feel a sense of threat, prejudice and distress they have not experienced before. The frequency of issues they encounter is now daily, be it reports of assaults, egregious bias at the BBC or a stream of hatred online.

We must also recognise a problem in our education system. Just last week, a Jewish chaplain at Leeds University moved to a safe location after hundreds of malicious calls including threats to kill him, rape his wife and murder his children. Jewish students also fear going on to campus. University leaders are failing in their duty.

We must recognise there has been a radicalisation of a significant number of British citizens since Oct 7. They have absorbed poisonous, misleading and incendiary social media content and are acting it out in the real world.

As it stands, Jewish people feel they must rely on each other but we need the good people of this country, the silent majority, to speak on our behalf. There must be zero tolerance for racism against Jews in this country. Unless this is widely enforced, I fear for where this story will end.