Antisemitism in the UK has doubled since October 7, according to a landmark new academic paper that also reveals rates are more prevalent among the young and Muslims than the general population.
Published in the peer-reviewed Journal of Contemporary Antisemitism, the study by Dr Daniel Allington, Reader in Social Analytics at King’s College London, examined police statistics for the eight-year period ending in March 2025.
It found that “religiously aggravated crimes targeting perceived Jews” doubled in the period after October 7, 2023 compared with the similar period before.
Over the entire eight years, the figures has gone up approximately three-fold.
It also looked at attitudinal data collected from the public between December 2020 and September 2025, using surveys conducted by pollsters YouGov and commissioned by Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA).
Disturbingly, the paper found that the proportion of people harbouring elevated antisemitic attitudes has roughly doubled over the past six years.
The article, Antisemitic Attitudes and Anti-Jewish Crime in the United Kingdom: Longitudinal Trends, Demographic Predictors, and Policy Implications, found higher rates among British Muslims than other groups. Allington, who is also a senior associate fellow of counter extremism group, wrote: “Proportions of individuals with elevated levels of antisemitic attitudes would appear to be much greater within the Muslim population than within the Christian and non-religious populations – a finding that survives controls for demographic variables, and which is sufficiently pronounced to leave very little room for statistical doubt.”
The article added that those who arrive in Britain from countries with higher rates of antisemitic attitudes tend not to change their attitudes: “When combined with the existing literature on the international distribution of antisemitism, this article’s attitudinal findings lend support to the intuitive idea that, when populations migrate, they will tend to carry their attitudes with them.
“This is an idea which may have wide implications – including for the safety of other groups beside Jews – and should thus be tested further, ideally in a manner which takes more account of diversity within such populations.”
The study also stated that antisemitic attitudes among young Brits had increased since October 7.
The findings suggested that “attempts to oppose the dissemination of antisemitic narratives should focus especially on Muslims and the young”.
He also finds that the attitudinal data shows that rates have risen at similar rates between 2020 and 2025 for what he describes as the “old” version of antisemitism, which he describes as “Judeophobic” and the “new” kind linked to antizionist extremism.
Surprisingly, the analysis revealed, that there was a rise in the old Judeophobic antisemitism among the young – aged between 18 and 27 years old – rather than among older age groups, a finding that Allington calls “unexpected”.
The paper concludes that this “traditional” antisemitism may have been gradually falling between 2015 and 2020 in a “decline which may have continued for a certain time afterward”.
However, Allington says it seems to have a comeback since October 7, 2023 “in parallel with a dramatic rise, not only in the proportion of people with elevated levels of newer antizionist antisemitic attitudes, but also in absolute numbers of aggravated criminal offences targeting perceived Jews”.
Reacting to the findings, Kevin Hollinrake, chairman of the Conservative Party, told the JC: “Kemi Badenoch has been clear that the rise of antisemitism in our country is a national emergency.
“Britain is a multiracial country, not a multicultural one. We have core values that must be respected by everyone who lives here, including tolerance of minority groups and rejection of hatred in all its forms.
“We cannot and will not tolerate antisemitism in any community.
“If people cannot accept those fundamentals, this is not the country for them and they should leave.
“Andy Burnham needs to explain how he will tackle this surge in the world’s oldest hatred and reassure British Jews that he will not shy away from doing so for political reasons.”
A spokesperson for CAA, which funded the collection of data in the study, said: “This research makes it abundantly clear that antisemitism among Muslim communities and younger people must now urgently be addressed.
“It is no good tiptoeing around the problem. The solution requires a combination of education and zero-tolerance enforcement – from mosques to social media and schools – but also better integration.
The group continued: “The finding that migrants are bringing their values with them and sticking to them will not surprise anyone, but now there is empirical data to prove it.
“That is a critical contribution to the current debate over immigration in this country, and in particular its role in the antisemitism crisis.”
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