The rise in both anti-Semitic and Islamophobic hate crime is "really appalling but not a surprise", says the director of policy at the Community Security Trust, a charity whose mission it is to provide safety to the UK Jewish community. Dr Dave Rich adds that the "enormous" increase has been apparent on social media and offline, exacerbated by the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th 2023, the subsequent, ongoing war in the Middle East and the anti-immigration riots that occurred in the UK over the summer. Report by Brooksl. Like us on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/itn and follow us on Twitter at http://twitter.com/itn
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00:00The figures released today showing an enormous increase in religious hate crime, and especially
00:06in anti-Semitic and anti-Muslim hate crime, are really appalling. But sadly, they are
00:12not a surprise. They confirm what we've seen over the past year in this huge increase in
00:18anti-Jewish hatred across the country following the Hamas terror attack on Israel on the 7th
00:23of October last year, and then throughout the subsequent war in the Middle East ever
00:28since then. And even though the numbers have come down a bit from that initial spike in
00:34October and November last year, the levels have still not come down to what we used to
00:38consider normal, whatever normal is when we're talking about such a terrible thing. At our
00:44organisation, Community Security Trust, we receive reports every day from Jewish people
00:49across the country who have had abuse or threats shouted at them in the street, or whose children
00:56have had similar kind of abuse and harassment at school or university, or who've seen anti-Jewish
01:02hatred of the most appalling kind online, all simply because they are Jewish. Quite
01:07often the language is related to the conflict in the Middle East, but they've been singled
01:12out simply because of who and what they are. They're British Jews trying to go about their
01:16ordinary lives, and it should be unacceptable, not just to Jewish people, but to everybody
01:21in this country. We have seen really significant increases in anti-Jewish hatred, both online
01:28and offline. I think we're all used to the idea now that online and social media can
01:34be a real sewer at times, full of the worst kind of bigotries. But what's most shocking
01:41in a way is the number of people who are quite willing to shout abuse and threats at random
01:47strangers in the street just because they're Jewish. It's that offline increase that I
01:52think is most worrying in a way.