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Religion-related hate crime against Jews at highest ever level
Jewish community targeted in more than 1 in 5 offences
October 12, 2021 18:16
Jewish community targeted in more than 1 in 5 offences
October 12, 2021 18:16Jews are now the victims of more than one in five hate crimes related to religion – the highest percentage ever recorded.
The shocking Home Office statistics continue a disturbing rise over the past few years.
The latest data reveals that there were 1,288 offences against Jewish people in which their perceived religion was recorded as relevant to the case in England and Wales.
The figures amount to 22 per cent of the total for the 12 months up to March this year, making Jews the second largest group.
The findings come after members of the community have been the targets of a series of shocking attacks over the past few months.
Recent horrific incidents include violent assaults on Orthodox Jews in north London, and alleged offences related to the pro-Palestinian protests during the Gaza conflict in May.
The Muslim community suffered 2,703 offences over the year up March, amounting to 45 per cent of the total, the greatest share of any of the nine religions recorded.
For the year up to March 2020, Jews were victims of 19 per cent of religion-related crimes, amounting to 1,205 offences.
That was up as a share on the previous year, when Jews were targeted in 18 per cent of religious hate crime, in 1,326 incidents.
Those statistics were a sharp jump from the year before, up to March 2018, when the 672 offences recorded against the Jewish community amounted to just 12 per cent of the total.
That was the first year in which the Home Office provided a breakdown by religion in this statistical format.
For this year the overall number of religion-related hate crimes fell from 2019, going from 6,856 to 5,627 offences, a drop of 18 per cent.
The Community Service Trust (CST), the charity which combats antisemitism, said: “It is alarming that religious hate crime disproportionately affects the Jewish community to this extent, and especially that anti-Jewish hate crime has gone up at a time when most religious hate crime has fallen.
"These figures do not even cover the period in May this year when anti-Jewish incidents reported to CST hit record levels. This trend needs to be reversed, and the people committing these crimes must be brought to justice.”