Antisemitism, both on and offline, is on the rise. Scarily on the rise. Community Security Trust recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents across the UK in the first half of 2025, the second-highest total ever reported to the charity in the first six months of any year. And the number feels all the more shocking when you consider that Jewish people make up just 0.5% of the UK population. You might not have known that if you aren’t Jewish, because, very often, this specific form of racism is overlooked.

But I can’t think of one person I know who hasn’t been impacted, either directly or through the fallout of an attack on a family member. Most recently, a photo of my daughter (at the time just six months old) on Instagram received a comment from a stranger, reading, “Eugh, just what the world doesn’t need, another Jew.” The comment wasn’t from a bot or an anonymous account; it was from an emboldened human being (who seemed to also use his profile as a professional portfolio for his photography), who felt it was appropriate to channel their hate of an entire religion toward a baby. Needless to say, I reported it to the police, and they, thankfully, cautioned the commenter.

And he isn’t alone. Over the past few years, in correlation with the Hamas terrorist attack on 7th October and Israel’s ongoing bombing of the Gaza Strip, more and more people have felt rallied and safe to spout antisemitic rhetoric online and in public. According to the monitoring charity Community Security Trust (CST), the UK recorded 4,103 antisemitic incidents in 2023, more than double the figure in 2022 — and two‑thirds of those (2,699) took place on or after 7 October 2023, the date of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. The CST described the surge as “a seismic effect … that outweighs the impact of previous wars involving Israel.”

Their written evidence to Parliament notes that “every escalation of the regional conflict triggers a rise in antisemitic incidents directed towards the local British Jewish community,” adding that the initial 2023 spike differed because the conflict has lasted so long and that the baseline level of incidents remains higher than before the war.

Tropes often repeated range from the Jewish blood libel, an antisemitic myth that falsely claims Jews murder Christians to use their blood for religious rituals to insisting Jews run the world’s media (likely spouting from claims made in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic book used to promote hatred of Jews, published in 1903.

I recently tried to explain to a friend just how upsetting these tropes were for myself, my family members and Jewish friends. “Why though?” they asked. “They’re basically just saying that Jews have loads of power, I don’t really see what’s wrong with that? Power is a good thing. It’s not personal to you specifically.”

Their comment circulated in my head for the rest of the day, not because I’d never heard it before, but because I was fed up with hearing comments like this repeatedly. I went to a Jewish school and was largely shielded from antisemitism in the wider community, but as soon as I hit university, my eyes were opened.

“Oh, you’re Jewish? You must have an amazing house,” my new flatmate enthused during our first freshers’ week drink. While another ran over to me at a bar some months later to tell me, with a huge grin on their face, that they’d managed to “wangle” free drinks: “I thought you’d be proud of my Jewish instincts coming out,” they added, as though I would respond with a huge pat on the back and an honorary membership card. And more people than I can count have ‘reassuringly’ told me that I needn’t worry because “I don’t look Jewish,” as if they were bestowing upon me a genetic accolade of the greatest merit.