UK
Bury newspaper pulls social media posts because of flood of antisemitic comments
Comments that included Holocaust denial followed stories on a new mikvah and Shoah education
January 25, 2026 12:29
Comments that included Holocaust denial followed stories on a new mikvah and Shoah education
January 25, 2026 12:29A Lancashire newspaper has revealed that it was forced to delete two Facebook posts about stories of Jewish interest because of the volume of antisemitic comments they drew.
In an open letter on Friday, Andrew Topping, news editor of Bury Times, said the paper would not tolerate antisemitism and appealed to readers to be “better and kinder”.
Over the past week, the paper published stories about planning approval for a new mikveh in Prestwich and about a survivor-led educational programme in schools in the run-up to Holocaust Memorial Day.
But when they were shared on Facebook, they attracted some 1,900 and 3,000 comments respectively. “Unfortunately, at least 60 to 70 per cent of those comments were antisemitic,” he said. “Possibly even more.”
They featured “outdated religious tropes, denied the existence of the Holocaust, and made a large proportion of our community here in Bury feel marginalised at a time of significant international tension.
“Simply, this is not acceptable, and it is not something we, here at the Bury Times, are willing to tolerate.”
A handful of users had already been banned “and we will not hesitate to take further action against those who persist in abusing our comment section to peddle hatred,” he added.
“We have also been forced to delete both posts from our Facebook page due to the sheer scale of commenting on each post, and the thousands of comments to moderate, remove and take action on.”
Removing the posts had been a “last resort,” he said.
“However, we may now be forced to turn commenting off on certain stories in the community because we simply do not have the time or resources to monitor and moderate thousands of discriminatory comments.”
With a Jewish community of 10,000, Bury “has one of the largest populations of Jewish people in the UK’, he pointed out.
The new mikvah was “a great news story for local female Jews”, he said.
“They should not be prevented from celebrating good news in their community out of fear about antisemitism in the comments section, and should be able to freely comment on Facebook without fear of persecution.”
The Holocaust education programme was “also a vital project to continue educating the next generations about one of the most horrific, systematic, and inhumane acts of genocide in human history”.
He recalled last September’s lethal attack on Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation in Manchester and more recently the foiled terrorist plot against Jews in Manchester.
“We simply ask people to be better and kinder, and consider how your words may impact the more than 10,000 Jews who call Bury their home,” he said.
“The world is in an exceptionally fraught and fragile place, and unity, not division, is the only way for society to prevail over such tension and intolerance.”
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