Britain’s Community Security Trust recorded 786 anti-Jewish hate incidents across the United Kingdom from January to June this year, representing a 43% decrease from the number of hate crimes reported in the first half of 2021.
More than 100 incidents were recorded with 16% of the victims and 20% of offenders being minors, CST said in its new “Anti-Semitic Incidents: January to June 2022” report published on Aug. 4.
Some 25 incidents targeted Jewish schoolchildren outside of school, often on their way to or from home; 12 incidents related to Russia’s war in Ukraine, such as conspiracy theories accusing Jewish people of causing and funding the war; 13 anti-Semitic incidents took place at Jewish schools; and 12 incidents involved Jewish schoolchildren or staff at non-faith schools.
This year’s figures are the fifth-highest half-year total ever recorded, noted the report.
Out of the overall total of 786 incidents recorded, 638 took place offline in the first half of 2022, forming 81% of the half-year total and the third-highest number of offline incidents ever recorded by the CST between January and June.
“This suggests that even in a year without a significant trigger event, in-person anti-Semitic activity has returned to and surpassed the volume typically reported before the [COVID-19] pandemic began,” stated the report. “These incidents include face-to-face verbal abuse, assault, threats, graffiti and hate mail.”
CST recorded 1,371 anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2021; 875 anti-Semitic incidents during the same period in 2020, 911 from January to June 2019, and 810 in the first six months of 2018. CST said that “without a trigger event to prompt it,” this year’s figure of 786 may represent a “new normal” and “a baseline of anti-Semitism in the U.K., which far exceeds the half-year totals reported to CST before 2017.”
