The deadly attack on a synagogue in Manchester on Thursday comes at a time of rising antisemitism around the world and in Britain.
The Community Security Trust, a charity that tracks antisemitic acts in Britain, reported 1,521 such cases between January and June of this year. Those included physical assaults, property damage, graffiti, online abuse and social media posts, and three cases identified as “extreme violence.” The trust said that was the second-highest rate of anti-Jewish incidents it had ever recorded in the country.
The highest ever number — 2,019 cases — was recorded in the first six months of 2024. Those followed the October 2023 attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas militants, in which about 1,200 people were killed, and Israeli’s retaliatory military campaign in Gaza, which has killed tens of thousands.
The humanitarian crisis in the enclave and the number of people killed in Israel’s bombardment and ground operations against Hamas have drawn regular protests across Europe.
The Runnymede Trust, a British think tank that focuses on social justice issues, said in a recent report that the current approach to protecting Jews from hate crimes in Britain was not working, and might even have worsened the problem by creating a perception among other groups that they were not as zealously protected.
“The significant funding given by governments to protect Jewish people specifically makes Jewish communities feel safer in the short term but has given rise to perceptions that there is a hierarchy of racisms in the U.K.,” wrote David Feldman, director of the Birkbeck Institute for the Study of Antisemitism, which produced the report with the Runnymede Trust.
“These divisions have been made worse by the conflation of anti-Zionism and criticism of Israel with antisemitism when this is not justified,” Mr. Feldman wrote in an introduction to the report. “At the same time, the left has too often failed to recognize antisemitism, let alone address it.”
Mark Landler is the London bureau chief of The Times, covering the United Kingdom, as well as American foreign policy in Europe, Asia and the Middle East. He has been a journalist for more than three decades.
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