Government stats on hate crimes

LAAS statement in response to annual government hate crime statistics, available here

These shocking statistics show a doubling of antisemitic hate crimes towards UK Jews since the start of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. A British Jew is now twelve times more likely to be attacked than someone from the second most attacked group. 

This is a damning indictment on the role our institutional apparatus - including politicians, police and the media - has played in not only failing to confront hate, but worse, too often actively contributing to it. The result, as so often has been the case in the past, is that antisemitism has, once again, been the canary down the coal mine, and been accompanied by an unprecedented rise in hate crimes against other minoritised communities. There has been a failure to educate on the history and risks of antisemitism or to understand contemporary antisemitism and, in ignoring it, have now created a situation whereby it has become normalised and many British Jews are afraid to publicly display their identity.  

It is the role of the government to ensure the safety of all in the UK, including British Jews, and they have failed to uphold that responsibility. While the Prime Minister has made appropriate statements, his actions have not responded adequately to the calls for support from our community. Hate groups linked to Hamas, and who spent October 7th celebrating the massacre of Jews in Israel, have regularly organised marches marred by anti-Jewish hate. One group notorious for anti-Jewish racism, the Palestinian Solidarity Campaign (PSC), is affiliated to all the trade unions in Labour’s NEC. Their rally outside the Labour conference featured appalling racism against Jews, and yet nine Labour MPs made a point of showing them their support and solidarity during that time. The PSC and similar groups must now be proscribed, not catered to, and MPs supporting them should be expelled.  

Let us be crystal clear - antizionism is antisemitism.  The majority of the British Jewish community identify as Zionists and that figure has risen since the massacre of October 7th.  Calls to ban Zionists from campuses, from unions, from British life, are just calls for the removal of Jews from Britain.  The police must treat the hard left and Islamists the same way as they do the far-right, and must handle these extremists at marches with the same tenacity they approached the recent national outbreak of far right rioting.

In his statement a few days ago in the Lords, government adviser on political violence and disruption Lord Walney urged the government to tackle the extremism paraded on London streets in support of terrorist groups. It is a difficult task but bold decisions need to be made to stop this hate.  Not just for the sake and future of the Jewish community but for the health and safety of all minorities and for our diverse multicultural society.