Record 2,000 Anti-Semitic Incidents in 1st Half of 2024: Report

A protester blows through a shofar during a demonstration in Parliament Square against antisemitism in Jeremy Corbyn's Labour Party, in London on March 26, 2018. (Jack Taylor/Getty Images)

A record high number of anti-Semitic incidents took place in the first half of this year, with the majority being motivated by the Israel–Hamas conflict, a charity has found.

The Community Security Trust (CST) said in its report published on Thursday that 1,978 incidents took place from January to June, more than double the number for the same period in 2023, where 964 incidents occurred, and the highest total reported by the charity in the first six months of any year.

Of the incidents, the vast majority (1,618) recorded were of abusive behaviour. The next most frequent incidents were threats (142), assault (121), and damage and desecration (83).

More than half (1,037) of the incidents happened in Greater London, followed by Greater Manchester (268), and West Yorkshire (115), according to the charity which monitors anti-Semitism and provides security support for the Jewish community.

Responding to the report, Prime Minister Sir Keir Starmer posted on social media platform X, “The rise of antisemitic incidents in the UK is deeply concerning.”

“Jewish people, and all those from faith communities, deserve to feel safe on our streets,” Starmer added.

Motivated by Oct. 7

The CST found that in 52 percent of incidents (1,026), discourse relating to Israel, the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attack, or the Palestinian territories was evident. Twenty-five percent were Holocaust-related, with other incidents categorised as involving conspiracy theories or religiously-motivated anti-Semitism.

In a blog post, the CST said the record figure “reflects the high levels of antisemitism recorded since the Hamas terror attack on Israel on 7 October 2023,” adding that although the surge is not as high as in the immediate aftermath of the attack, “the ensuing and ongoing war has continued to hold prominence in media, news and public discourse, impacting the scale and content of anti-Jewish hate observed this year.”

Dr. Dave Rich, the CST’s director of policy, said that while anti-Semitism has gone up annually over the last decade, what the charity has seen since the Hamas terror attack was “truly unprecedented.”

In a video posted on X, Rich said that whenever Israel is at war, the UK sees “massive spikes in anti-Jewish hate crimes,” but that the phenomenon is not seen in other conflicts, saying: “When Russia invaded Ukraine, we didn’t see a similar surge in anti-Russian hate crime. But it happens every time that Israel is at war. Anti-Semitism goes up.”

Anti-Semitism on Campus

Similar to trends noticed in the CST’s annual anti-Semitism report for 2023, a high number of incidents happened at schools and universities, with a record number of reports of anti-Jewish hatred occurring in higher education settings.

Former universities minister, Robert Halfon, who served in the previous Conservative government, had said in March he feared  “ghettoisation” was going on at British campuses, where Jewish students are unable to have the full university experience and enjoy themselves because of rising anti-Semitism, which had increased since the Hamas–Israel war.

Halfon had said the month prior that institutions were failing to tackle anti-Semitism, saying that “there’s been at best the turning of a blind eye to anti-Semitism, and at worst appeasing it, and perhaps also not knowing how to deal with it. That’s not acceptable.”

In one instance in February, the University of Leeds’s Jewish chaplain, Rabbi Zechariah Deutsch, and his family were forced into hiding after they received threats to their safety.

The university’s Hillel House, owned by the Union of Jewish Students, was also daubed with graffiti.

Pro-Palestinian Encampments

Universities have become hotbeds of pro-Palestinian activism and echoing activity seen in the United States, campuses across the UK saw activists set up encampments, including at Cambridge and Oxford.

During the protests, student activists had called on their universities to perform such activities as disclose their partnerships with arms manufacturers, including those linked to Israel.

In recent months, institutions have won legal battles to have these activists and their tents removed, such as the London School of Economics and Nottingham and Birmingham universities.

This week, University College London won a High Court order to remove the encampment which had occupied their main campus since May and which at its peak involved 52 tents and around 50 activists.