Antisemitism On the Rise in the UK

Recently, the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs reported the following,

Since 13 September 2015, 40 people have been killed in terrorist attacks and 511 people (including 4 Palestinians) injured. There have been 155 stabbing attacks (including 76 attempted attacks), 96 shootings, 45 vehicular (ramming) attacks and one vehicle (bus) bombing.1

All too often today it seems that innocent Israelis and Palestinians are being attacked by pedestrian terrorists, blinded by a mixture of radical Islam and misguided nationalism! How I wish this were not true…I would much rather speak about the great things God is doing among Israelis and Israeli Palestinians.

And believe me—there is much good to speak about as both the Israeli and Palestinian church continues to grow in the midst of violence and unrest within Israel. Yet, the attacks against Israelis have, in reality, been attacks against Jewish people as proven by what has taken place recently in countries like France and England. This growing group of anti-Semites claim to be politically motivated against Zionism when in fact it’s just old-fashioned racially driven antisemitism!

The British government has formed a committee to study the issue and make recommendations. They have produced an extensive report detailing the growing antisemitism in the UK.²

This group affirms the findings of Community Security Trust (CST), an organization which operates within the Jewish community to report on antisemitism. In their most recent report, they claim that,

There were 924 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in 2015, the third-highest annual total CST has ever recorded. The total of 924 incidents is a fall of 22 per cent from the 2014 total of 1,179 anti-Semitic incidents, which was the highest annual total recorded by CST. The second-highest annual total recorded by CST was 931 anti-Semitic incidents in 2009.³

In fact, the current mayor of London, a Muslim, said the following in a recent interview,

Sadly, for many people here in London, anti-Semitism is a very present problem. Over the past five years, anti-Semitic offenses in the capital have increased by 153 percent with 267 more offenses in 2015 compared to 2011. There are schools in London that need security simply because they are Jewish faith schools. There are places of worship that require protection simply because they are synagogues. This simply isn’t good enough.⁴

There is no doubt in my mind, as I travel to London three or four times a year to help with our growing ministry there, that this is even worse than is being reported.