This year's CST report reveals how antisemitic hate crimes were recorded in all but one police region in Britain last year, the worst year for the charity on record.
In 2021, the total level of antisemitic incidents rose by 34 per cent to 2,255, the highest total ever recorded, with more than a third of all incidents occurring in May and June as violence between Gaza and Israel escalated.
Home Secretary Priti Patel vowed that perpetrators of this “shocking” anti-Jewish race hate would feel the “full force of the law”.
This is the first time CST has ever recorded over 2,000 incidents in a single year. The UK has seen record annual totals for antisemitic incidents in five of the past six years. CST has recorded antisemitic incidents since 1984. pic.twitter.com/0N3QYkaqew
— CST (@CST_UK) February 10, 2022
Manchester and London alone saw 155 antisemitic incidents involving people shouting abuse from passing vehicles at Jewish people, including the notorious convoy of cars that drove through north London in June bearing Palestinian flags while passengers bellowed antisemitic abuse through the window using megaphones.
There was a threefold increase in antisemitic incidents at schools — including a sharp rise in cases at non-faith schools. Of the 182 incidents recorded, 99 were aimed at Jewish children and staff at non-faith schools. CST said these staff and pupils felt particularly isolated.
Universities also witnessed a record number of antisemitic incidents with 128 cases reported in 2021, compared to 44 the previous year.
There were 82 incidents of damage or desecration of Jewish property and 10 cases of mass-mailed leaflets or emails. CST also recorded 16 “Zoom-bombings” — video events hijacked with antisemitic material.
There were 78 incidents fuelled by conspiracy theories about the pandemic. These ranged from claims of Jewish involvement in creating and spreading the virus to wishes that Jewish people would die from it.
Holocaust imagery, such as the yellow Star of David, was also appropriated as part of anti-vaccine campaigns.
Online antisemitic incidents fell by 13 per cent, from 638 online incidents in 2020 to 552 in 2021, but the CST said this figure underestimated the true scale of the problem because targeted campaigns aimed at individual victims often included a bombardment of abuse from multiple accounts that was only recorded as a single incident.
Lord Mann, the government’s antisemitism adviser, said: “CST is a major and critical asset to the Jewish community. The understanding it has provided through these statistics underlines a requirement for us to reconsider our efforts to tackle antisemitism.”
Commenting on the CST Incident Report Keith Black, Jewish Leadership Council Chair said: “CST’s Incident Report makes for grim reading with the number of antisemitic incidents being the highest on record. It has acutely illustrated the correlation between conflict in the Middle East and a rise in antisemitic incidents in the UK.
"There can never be any justification for anti-Jewish racism and sadly more work needs to be done across society to tackle it. We remain grateful to CST for its tireless work in securing our community and for the continued support of the government, police, and politicians from all political parties.”
