More than 100 anti-Semitic incidents have been reported to the Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that helps to protect Jews in Britain, since the start of this month, as Jews in Britain are enduring a backlash of attacks, bomb threats and anti-semitic insults fuelled by the Gaza conflict.
Mark Gardner, Directore of communications at the CST, said: “This is well over double what we would normally expect to see and most of the incidents are linked to what’s going on in Israel and Gaza.”
‘‘We have had at least double the number of incidents that we would expect, but the situation is not out of hand as is the case in France,’’ he added
Community safety groups fear the total could be the second highest ever recorded, after an explosion of violence during the 2009 Gaza war.
In several disturbing cases attackers have invoked the Holocaust and even shouted: ‘Heil Hitler’ and ‘Hitler you were right!’ at victims.
At a Central London march, protesters confronted a Jewish woman with her two young children and told them: ‘Burn in hell.’
A rabbi was attacked by four Muslim teenagers outside a Jewish boarding school in Gateshead in one of the most serious incidents. In Belfast, bricks were thrown at the city’s only synagogue, smashing windows on two consecutive nights.
Groups of Asian men chanted 'Heil Hitler’ as they drove through a Jewish area of Manchester, throwing missiles at passers-by.
In north London, one pro-Israel organisation received a telephone bomb threat and a Jewish boy riding a bicycle had a stone thrown at his head by a woman in a niqab.
There has also been been an explosion of anti-Semitic abuse on social networks, including Facebook and Twitter.
In a separate incident, a BBC journalist was reprimanded after seeming to suggest western politicians failed to intervene in the Middle East because they had been ‘bought’ by the Jews.