I was privileged recently to hear a presentation by Rabbi Yonah Bookstein on the commemoration of anti-Jewish pogroms in Poland. As the rabbi told his audience, the most that the authorities would usually permit was a grudging acknowledgement of the victims. Acknowledging the perpetrators – for the most part, Polish Catholics – tended to be a bridge too far.
Britain today would appear to have a similar problem.
When confronted with atrocities, our leaders can just about bring themselves to talk about antisemitism, but only as if it came from nowhere, and as if nobody knew the cause.
The result? More money to fund higher fences around Jewish institutions – combined with tacit acceptance that the threat against that such defensive measures protect will continue to increase.
One of the most depressing documents I have ever seen was the 2025 report of the Board of Deputies Commission on Antisemitism, chaired by Lord Mann and Dame Penny Mordaunt.
In his introduction to the report, Board of Deputies President Phil Rosenberg clearly identified the recent surge in antisemitism as a consequence of the Hamas-led attacks on Israel in 2023. And in their foreword to the same report, Lord Mann and Dame Penny did the same.
But as for the body of the report? It contained not a word on Hamas, or Islamism, or Jihad.
There was an acknowledgement that “far too often, British Jewish people are held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government”, but no recognition of how biased and distorted popular understanding of that government’s actions typically is, nor of the fact that the fundamental problem extremists have with Israel is neither its government nor its actions but its very existence.
And, of course, there is no discussion of which demographic groups might be most susceptible to antisemitic ideas, or most prone to antisemitic action.
In a twist that would be comical if it were not so alarming, the report’s only mention of a religion besides Judaism is in its welcome recommendation that a Christian initiative to train primary school teachers not to teach anti-Jewish tropes to their children, “particularly focusing on Christian sources”, should “be evaluated and rolled out” throughout “faith schools across the United Kingdom”.
Was it a Christian extremist who attacked worshippers at the Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue, last Yom Kippur? Was it Christian extremists who tried to acquire weapons and ammunition for a mass shooting attack on Jewish targets in Manchester the previous year? Was it a Christian extremist who stabbed two visibly Jewish men on the streets of Golders Green this spring? Was it a Christian extremist who assaulted a Jewish building inspector in Slough, accusing him of “killing babies in Palestine”?
It was not. But, when the government responded to the home affairs select committee’s warnings about a rise in anti-Israel extremism, the best that it could offer was a commitment to continue following that report’s milquetoast recommendations.
The government can do better than this. It can do better because it has data. And, as it happens, so do I.
As my research shows, antisemitic crime rates doubled after October 7, 2023, and so did the proportion of individuals with highly antisemitic attitudes. Across society, growth in such attitudes has primarily been among the young: the group most exposed to social media, and the group most recently in schools and universities (the sites of some of the country’s most intensive anti-Israel activism). But, both before and after the Hamas-led atrocities of 2023, such attitudes were most prevalent among Muslims.
Interestingly, these observations apply whether one considers “old” antisemitic attitudes, such as the idea that Jews control the media, or “new” antisemitic attitudes, such as the idea that Israel can get away with murder because its supporters control the media.
Either way, it is Muslims who are most likely to hold such attitudes, and among young people that such attitudes have seen the most growth.
The only sound basis for policy is a sober acknowledgement of reality. Not all Muslims hold antisemitic views, just as not all young people are avid consumers of pro-Hamas TikTok reels, and not everyone who buys the lie of Israeli genocide in Gaza is plotting to shoot up a synagogue.
But when patterns recur again and again, a government that affects to see only unconnected dots is on course for disaster.
And in that disaster, there will be no communal limits on the carnage. Palestine may be their favourite recruiting tool, but the Islamists will ultimately come for everyone: Jews, Christians, atheists, Hindus, Sikhs, Buddhists, pagans, and even – perhaps especially – moderate Muslims who don’t want to live in a repressive medieval theocracy.
A year ago, when I published the UK’s first book-length report on Islamist antisemitism, the government was too afraid to discuss these issues: at the end of the day, it was just so much easier to pretend that the country’s greatest terror threat was to be found in adolescent boys who can’t get a date.
After Heaton Park, Bondi Beach, Golders Green, and all the other attacks around the world, that ought to have changed.
It has not.
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