The data appear to show that British society is shunning antisemitic prejudice. Since 2015, antisemitic prejudice amongst British adults has declined from 45% in 2015, to 39% in 2016, to 36% in 2017, but sizeable sections of British society clearly do still hold deeply antisemitic views (measured as the number of antisemitic statements respondents agreed with).
Men, older people and people from lower social grades are more likely to be antisemitic than women, younger people and people of higher social grades.
Almost one in three British Jews have considered leaving the UK due to antisemitism. Only 59% of British Jews feel welcome in the UK, and 17% feel unwelcome. For the past two years, 37% of British Jews have been concealing their Judaism in public. This is unsurprising given the 45% surge in antisemitic crime since 2014.
In 2017, one in five British Jews felt that Jews did not have a long-term future in the UK and only 41% of British Jews felt that Jews have a future in Europe.
British Jews ranked Islamism as their greatest concern, followed by antisemitism on the far-left, and then antisemitism on the far-right.
When asked about antisemitism in discourse about Israel, British Jews responded unequivocally and emphatically: 78% had witnessed antisemitism disguised as a political comment about Israel or Zionism, 81% said that media bias against Israel was fuelling persecution of Jews in Britain, and 78% felt intimidated by tactics used to boycott Israel.
British Jews delivered a damning verdict on law enforcement in Britain. 64% felt that the authorities were not doing enough to address and punish antisemitism, and a mere 39% felt confident that antisemitic hate crimes against them would be prosecuted.
For the first time, more than half of British Jews believe that the CPS is doing too little to fight antisemitism, and almost half criticised the courts.
Supporters of left-wing political parties and ‘remainers’ are less likely to be antisemitic than hose on the right or supporters of the ‘leave’ camp. However, the data does not suggest that the EU referendum has unleashed antisemitism.
76% of British Jews felt that political events caused antisemitism to rise, and for two years, over 4 in 5 British Jews have suspected the Labour Party of harbouring antisemites.
The failure of the authorities to act against antisemitic crime, and antisemitism in politics, have had a severe detrimental effect on British Jews’ sense of security, risking the progress made by British society.
