I’VE  heard it said often enough that antisemitism is like a virus.

You’ve probably heard the same.

So, it shouldn’t surprise any of us that the age old anti-Jewish virus adapted without any trouble when a global pandemic hit all our lives.

Despite the big fall in public activities and people on the streets, antisemitic incidents recorded by CST and passed to us by police were still the third-highest ever. CST’s staff, volunteers and our police partners still dealt with over 1,650 antisemitic incidents.

An eight per cent fall from 2019 is very minor indeed and even more so when you consider that the malign impact of the Labour antisemitism controversy has largely fallen away.

To say that we recorded 1,668 incidents just makes antisemitism sound like a statistic, but that statistic is made up of the Jewish men, women, children, organisations and locations that have been targeted.

As always, the recorded figure will be a small percentage of the true total, so the deeper meaning lies
in how it compares with other years, thanks to the longstanding consistency and expertise of CST’s work.

For CST, the high total is a good indicator of why our work has not materially changed over the last year.

The offices remain open, as does our 24/7 national security centre, which connects to hundreds
of communal sites, especially schools, many of which have not closed due to having key workers’ children.
Incidents are still reported to us daily and each one is responded to.

Our researchers were among the first to comprehensively chart the spread of pandemic-linked antisemitism, especially through the various social media cesspits of the far right.

Simultaneously, online communal events started getting hacked and disrupted by Nazis, causing us to urgently distribute safety advice for Zoom hosting, that was then sent by the police, the Home Office and CST to other minority groups for them to similarly defend their activities.

We know from Jewish history what happens when the economy is in trouble, when people lose trust in mainstream politics and when wild conspiracy theories take hold.

Those are the conditions in which the antisemitism virus thrives, so I urge all JC readers to be vigilant, to report antisemitism to CST or police and to support all of our communal efforts against the danger.

Visit www.cst.org.uk. In an emergency, call the police and then call our 24-hour emergency number, 0800 032 3263.

Mark Gardner is Chief Executive of the CST