CAA polling reveals majority of British Jews see no future in the UK
This weekend, we published new polling of the Jewish community – undertaken shortly before the Bondi Beach massacre – which revealed an alarming level of despair and fury among British Jews.
Here are some of the main results:
Being Jewish in Britain
- A majority of British Jews (51%) feel that they do not have a long-term future in the UK. Less than a quarter (23%) do. The results are similar regarding the long-term future for Jews in Europe.
- Almost half (45%) of British Jews do not feel welcome in the UK; less than a third (32%) do.
- A clear majority of British Jews (61%) have considered leaving Britain in the past two years. A majority of them cite the surge in antisemitism since 7th October 2023 as the reason, but almost half also point to general prejudice against Jews in society and antisemitism in political parties.
- 59% of British Jews try not to show visible signs of their Jewishness due to concerns relating to antisemitism.
- 98% of British Jews believe that, since October 2023, the level of antisemitism has increased compared to before. Interestingly, in a recent poll of the British public that we commissioned from YouGov, 51% of the British public said that they believed that antisemitism has increased in the UK since October 2023.
- 96% of British Jews feel that Jewish people in Britain are less safe compared to before October 2023.
Extremism
- Almost all British Jews (96%) consider Islamists to be a serious threat; only 4% do not.
- 92% of British Jews consider the far-left to be a serious threat, compared to less than two-thirds (64%) who consider the far-right to be a serious threat.
- 91% of British Jews do not think that the authorities are doing enough to tackle religious extremism; 89% think that the authorities are not doing enough to tackle political extremism.
Policing and prosecutions
- Fewer than one in ten (8%) of British Jews believe that the authorities are doing enough to address and punish antisemitism. A staggering 88% believe that they are not.
- There is extremely little confidence (10%) that if a British Jew reported an antisemitic hate crime, it would be prosecuted, with 77% of British Jews believing that it would not, even if there is enough evidence.
- On policing, only 14% of British Jews think that the police do enough to protect them; 83% do not.
- Regarding prosecution, only 7% of British Jews think that the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) does enough to protect British Jews; 76% do not.
- The courts fare little better: only 10% of British Jews think that the courts do enough to protect them; 71% of British Jews do not.
Politics
- We asked British Jews if, overall, they think that the current Government has been good for the Jewish community, bad for the Jewish community, or somewhere in between? A remarkable 80% believe that the current Government has been bad for the Jewish community; only 4% think the opposite.
- More generally, there are precious few British Jews (6%) who think that the Government does enough to protect the community. 93% think that it does not.
- Among political parties, Labour still tops the list of parties that British Jews think are too tolerant of antisemitism among their officeholders, at 81%. But the Green Party is not far behind, at 76%. These are negative trends, coming after the EHRC investigation into Labour and pronouncements on antisemitism in our politics. The Liberal Democrats are at 49% and the SNP at 48%. On the other side of the political spectrum, the Conservatives are 14% (an improvement on last year) and Reform UK at 20% (about the same).
Rhetoric
- 89% of British Jews – a resounding majority – consider anti-Zionism to be a form of antisemitism. Only 8% do not. This puts the lie to persistent, baseless arguments that Zionism and Judaism are unconnected, and that Jewish people should not feel impacted by extremist rhetoric on Zionism.
- 95% of British Jews consider the phrase ‘Globalise the Intifada’ to be a call for violence against Jewish people.
You can read the full results, as well as information about fieldwork and methodology, here.
The polling was published on the front page of The Sunday Telegraph, accompanied by an op-ed by CAA Chief Executive Gideon Falter, which you can also read online here (paywall).
Watch: Stephen Silverman, Director of Investigations and Enforcement at Campaign Against Antisemitism, speaks to GB News about our polling.
The polling starkly tells how Jews blame two successive governments, as well as inert police chiefs and prosecutors, for the explosion of antisemitic extremism which has left two Jews dead and much of the rest of the community reluctantly eyeing the exits.
History tells us that when Jews fear for their future, a society is on the brink.
This week’s announcement of tougher action over a single chant by only two police forces (see below) and a meaningless action plan by the Government (also see below) is far too little, far too late. After more than two years of two-tier policing and institutional cowardice, there is still an alarming lack of urgency from the authorities.
The appeasement of extremists has so far borne the same fruits as it always does: people dead at the hands of Islamists, the growing radicalisation of our children, the crumbling of law enforcement and now a community questioning whether it has a place in this country at all.
Until politicians and police chiefs muster the fortitude to act forcefully, Britain will only slide further into the abyss that fanatics have opened up beneath us.
It’s not too late to donate!
The battle for Britain is a front line in the fight against antisemitism.
As Israel’s hostages are returned and Britain reels from the violent murder of two Jewish men on Yom Kippur by an Islamist terrorist in Manchester, it is more urgent than ever that we come together, in the spirit of the Maccabees, to fight for our rights and our country’s core values.
The Maccabees were a small group of plucky individuals whose epic story of resistance forms the basis of the story of Chanukah – and inspires us all to this day.
Over each day of the festival, we have been showcasing different aspects of our work at Campaign Against Antisemitism, and you can read here about our work with students, online investigations, monitoring of hostile events, litigation, holding of the media to account, events and policy advocacy.
Whether through volunteering or through donating, you can be part of our band of modern-day Maccabees and help us fight back today.
Please support CAA. Visit antisemitism.org/donatethischanukah and help us to bring light to the darkness this Chanukah.
Two police forces announce arrests for “Globalise the Intifada” chants at marches
The Commissioner of the Metropolitan Police Service and the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police have announced that they will begin arresting people on marches who chant “Globalise the Intifada”.
After two years of repeatedly excusing calls to ‘globalise the Intifada’, police chiefs are only now waking up to the fact that people who call for death to Jews like this should be locked away.
No laws have changed – this is something that they could have done two years ago, instead of endlessly excusing and rationalising this sort of rhetoric or claiming that they were powerless to act against it.
In any event, banning this one chant is a useless token measure. This week, within days of the Bondi Beach massacre, a mob marched through Christmas shoppers on Oxford Street shouting “Zionism must fall” and “Death, death to the IDF”. What about all of this rhetoric?
Watch: An anti-Israel mob spews vile rhetoric while marching through Christmas shoppers in central London.
Not only that, but many other police forces around the country have refused to commit to this new policing policy on “Globalise the Intifada” chanting.
What a farce.
Even this modest, extremely belated step by the country’s two main police forces – which has taken two long years – is not carrying the support of colleagues nationwide. So you can be arrested for something in one county but your friend down the road can do it with impunity? There is no direction and a total absence of leadership in British policing. Two-tier policing is now split into so many tiers we can scarcely keep count.
Our criminal justice system is totally at a loss as to how to confront the extremism that its inaction has enabled.
These two police chiefs are closing the door after the horse has bolted. At the first Palestine march two years ago, the Met declared that they would not arrest people over the “From the River to the Sea” chant before the march even took place, and even in the last few days the Commissioner has reiterated that no action will be taken on this chant.
As we have explained to the media over the past week – including in the interviews below – there is a great deal of catching up for police chiefs to do if we are going to restore law and order in this country. We pray that more Jews don’t need to die on their watch before they do.
Watch Stephen Silverman on LBC and on TalkTV.
The BBC jumps into action to undermine the new policing policy
As soon as it was announced that those chanting “Globalise the Intifada” at marches may now face arrest, the BBC sprung into action to explain that actually the First Intifada was “a largely unarmed and popular uprising”, thereby implying that the phrase isn’t threatening and really shouldn’t bother anyone.
Let’s set the record straight.
In reality, sixteen civilians were murdered during the First Intifada and some 1,400 were injured. Over 1,500 soldiers were injured or killed. There were more than 3,600 Molotov cocktail attacks, 100 hand grenade attacks and 600 assaults with guns or explosives. Hamas was born during this period. That was the First Intifada. In the Second Intifada, over 1,000 Israelis were murdered, with suicide bombings rampant in Israeli cafes and nightclubs and on buses.
Do these sound “unarmed” to you?
Even the BBC had to quietly edit that description out of the article. But the new version was even worse, explicitly describing Intifada as “peaceful”. They are utterly incorrigible.
The efforts of our national broadcaster to play down antisemitism and Islamist and far-left threats against Jewish people evidently continue unabated.
Government plan to tackle antisemitism: is that it?
The Government has published its much-awaited plan for tackling antisemitism following the Manchester terrorist attack on a synagogue on Yom Kippur.
This is a very disappointing document which does not rise to the gravity of the situation that we find ourselves in after years of inaction by successive governments. This document does not even refer to proscribing terrorist organisations that operate freely here in the UK, which was a manifesto promise that the Government seems to have quietly dropped since it was elected.
As the UK’s only dedicated antisemitism campaigning charity, we suspect that we were not consulted by the Government because it would not like our answers. Extremism and radicalisation have been allowed to take hold to such an extent in this country that the medicine will not be easy to swallow. Tackling problems such as rampant Islamism and two-tier policing requires a recognition that these problems actually exist.
Instead of addressing these thorny issues, this document simply reheats meek policy proposals, some of which date back years to the previous administration, and there are no measures to address extremism in areas that it has newly taken hold.
At a time when Hamas is building the capacity for terrorist attacks in Europe, including the UK, alleged Islamic State terrorists are on trial charged with planning a massacre of Jews, charges have been filed against suspected Hizballah members in this country, the Houthis continue to target Jews and British shipping, the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC) and the Muslim Brotherhood continue to operate freely here, radical preaching in mosques and extremist rhetoric on campuses persist unabated, and more – this is not an abstract debate about policy.
Antisemitism is a national security threat. Just in the last two years, we have seen those radicalised by antisemitic sentiment murder Jews, injure policeman, intimidate our politicians and adversely impact proceedings in Parliament, distort our elections, damage military hardware and private businesses, corrupt students on campus, take over our streets and more.
People are dead and it will take more than well-meaning, pre-existing initiatives like a modest ‘innovation fund’ to turn things around.
Why you came to light up London
We asked Jewish people in Britain for their reactions to the Bondi Beach terrorist attack in which gunmen murdered Jews at a Chanukah event in Sydney.
This is what they said.
Watch: Why you came to light up London.
Exposing antisemitism, one doughnut at a time
Let the antisemites know exactly where you stand with our latest hoodie (doughnut not included).
Get yours now at antisemitism.org/shop.
Watch: Exposing antisemitism, one doughnut at a time.
What would you write on our digivan?
Our digital billboard van is a powerful communications tool, bringing a message to tens of thousands of people on our streets, and to millions through social media videos.
We are offering our e-mail subscribers the chance to suggest wording or graphics for us to put on the van.
What would you write on our digivan?
E-mail us at [email protected] to tell us!
How to celebrate Christmas as an anti-Israel activist
Now for some tragicomic Christmas relief.
Here is Elie’s guide to celebrating Christmas as an anti-Israel activist.
Watch: How to celebrate Christmas as an anti-Israel activist.
From organising a Chanukiah lighting commemorative event in Parliament Square the day after the Bondi Beach massacre to publishing our polling on the front page of a major Sunday newspaper, and from leading analysis in the media of the terrorist attack in Australia and the police announcement in the UK to issuing calls for information regarding damage to Chanukiahs, our team has worked hard through this festival to ensure that the public is informed and the Jewish community has a voice.
Through our work with the media and the reach of our numerous social media channels, millions of people are better informed about antisemitism.
That is thanks to your support. So many of you have contributed this Chanukah, and with Christmas now upon us, it is not too late to play a part in ensuring that we can continue to fight antisemitism in the new year. You can make a donation of any size here.
We wish all of our Christian friends and supporters a very happy Christmas.
