What to do about Britain’s rising antisemitism?

A stabbing attack in a Jewish neighbourhood of London lends fresh urgency to the question

British Jews are not a large group. Just 287,000 people described themselves as Jewish, in either a religious or an ethnic sense, when filling in the 2021 census of England and Wales. Hindus are more than three times as numerous, and the census counted just under 4m Muslims. And, like many other religious and ethnic-minority groups, Jews are dispersing from the old urban neighbourhoods. The Jewish population is growing most quickly not in long-established Jewish districts like Golders Green, in north-west London, but in commuter towns like Borehamwood.

All of which helps explain why a wave of antisemitic attacks in London feels especially terrifying. On April 29th two Jewish men were stabbed in Golders Green. Police have charged Essa Suleiman, a 45-year-old of Somali heritage, with attempted murder and declared the assault a terrorist incident. The stabbings were the latest in a series of violent acts since March. Synagogues and other Jewish institutions have been targeted with incendiary devices. Sir Keir Starmer, the prime minister, told a hastily convened summit in Downing Street on May 5th that the latest attack was “part of a pattern of rising antisemitism that has left our Jewish communities feeling frightened, angry and asking whether this country, their home, is safe for them”.

Mr Suleiman was also accused of attempting to murder an acquaintance, Ishmail Hussein, in south London earlier on the same day as the stabbings in Golders Green. He seems to have had mental-health issues. More than a decade ago he had been jailed for attacking a police officer and dog. In 2020 he was referred to Prevent, the government’s counter-extremism programme (the case was closed).

Many British Jews believe that frequent anti-war and anti-Israel protests in Britain have made antisemites bolder. Antisemitic incidents rose by 4% last year, according to the Community Security Trust, a charity which monitors them (see chart). The monthly average of 308 was double the average in the year before the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th 2023. (Incidents driven by Islamist extremism account for only a small share of the total.) In a YouGov survey last September commissioned by the Campaign Against Antisemitism, 26% of Britons agreed with the trope that “Israel can get away with anything because its supporters control the media”, up from 18% a year earlier.

What might be done? A first step is increased policing. Sir Keir has pledged a “visible” police presence around Jewish communities and an extra £25m ($34m) for security. Swifter prosecutions of hate crimes are also promised. A bevy of police officers now stand guard at the entrance to Golders Green Tube station. Millions of pounds in security funding, mostly private, has already made some of London’s Jewish sites resemble fortresses.

Another area for action is countering state-sponsored terrorism. A new group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia has claimed responsibility for attacks against Jewish institutions in Britain and on the continent. Although it has not been formally linked to Iran, experts say its social-media presence has the marks of the militias its regime sponsors elsewhere. A complication, in Britain and beyond, is that at least some attacks are suspected of being the work of gig-economy criminals hired by hostile states like Iran and Russia.

The thorniest question is what might be done to limit the racist hatred that flows through social media and has been heard at protest marches. Broader efforts to protect the public from harm, such as the Online Safety Act of 2023, have had mixed results. Britain should protect freedom of speech, Sir Keir said in a BBC interview on May 2nd, but people chanting “Globalise the intifada” should be prosecuted. In some cases, he said, protests should be banned (polling suggests that most Britons agree with him).

That alarms those who think they should be free to express concerns about Gaza. And bans can backfire. Last July the government proscribed Palestine Action (PA), a protest group that had spray-painted military planes, as a terrorist organisation; thousands of people have been arrested for holding pro-PA placards at demonstrations. It has not stopped the spread of antisemitic attacks. Nor is the boundary between Jew-hatred and criticism of Israel clear: someone holding a “Free Gaza” sign is not automatically an antisemite.

After an attack on a Manchester synagogue in October that killed two people the government commissioned a review of public-order legislation, possibly with an eye to increasing its power to stop protests while maintaining protections for freedom of expression. It is already months late.

History provides few easy solutions. Britain passed public-order legislation in 1936 in a bid to crack down on the British Union of Fascists. After the second world war it considered and eventually rejected on liberal grounds proposals to legislate against hate speech. Finally in the 1960s Parliament introduced the offence of “incitement to racial hatred” that remains part of the law today. Debates over a definition of anti-Muslim hostility unveiled in March are merely the latest proof that defining “hate speech”—let alone prohibiting it—is fiendishly tricky.

But past steps did little to prevent vile ideas from spreading in Britain—nor were they the main reason such ideas have almost always failed to catch on. The waxing and waning of antisemitism in Britain has been detached from legal measures. Instead the peace British Jews and other minorities have enjoyed has largely come from living in a stable and tolerant society.

Many Muslims and Jews prefer to oppose racism together. After the Golders Green stabbings, women from both communities staged a joint protest against attacks directed at them. Greater awareness has prompted some pro-Palestinian activists to scrutinise their own ranks for antisemitism masquerading as solidarity.

If matters worsen, more British Jews may consider leaving the country. In the 2010s some 38,000 French Jews moved to Israel amid rising antisemitism, peaking in 2015 after a deadly shooting at a kosher supermarket, according to the Jewish Agency, a charity. Others moved to Britain, believing it to be a safer place. In the nearly 370 years since they returned from medieval expulsion, British Jews have withstood serious bouts of antisemitism and violence, reckoning that much longer stretches of quiet outweighed them. For some, this time may prove different.■