UK
Evidence of UK antisemitism ‘stunned us into silence’, say authors of new report
Tackling anti-Jewish hatred is urgent issue, say John Mann and Penny Mordaunt
July 13, 2025 10:15
Tackling anti-Jewish hatred is urgent issue, say John Mann and Penny Mordaunt
July 13, 2025 10:15The authors of a forthcoming report into antisemitism in the UK say they had been “stunned” and “alarmed” by the evidence they encountered.
Lord Mann, the government’s antisemitism adviser, and former defence secretary under the previous Conservative administration Penny Mordaunt were appointed to head a commission into antisemitism set up by the Board of Deputies.
Writing in the Telegraph on Sunday ahead of the launch of their report on Tuesday, they said that despite their decades of political experience “we were still stunned into silence by the evidence that we received…particularly from young people in the Jewish community”.
They added they “were alarmed by the combination of the rawness of the impact of people’s everyday experiences intertwined with the extraordinary routines and normality within which this is occurring”.
Their report will unveil 10 recommendations to tackle antisemitism, including recognising more widely that Jews represent an ethnic group – which they are currently defined as under the law: that police should be consistent in dealing with antisemitic hate crime and that an antisemitic training qualification should be established for employers.
Antisemitism was “an urgent issue not just for the Jewish community but for the United Kingdom as a whole”, they declared.
They said as they “dug deeper what really scared us was the increasing normalisation of far more extreme, personalised and sometimes life changing impact directed at individuals purely and simply because they are Jewish”.
The two co-chairs began investigating after their appointment in November.
The establishment of a commission was a manifesto promise by President Phil Rosenberg, who has recently completed his first year in office.
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