Among its many recommendations is to revamp the authorities’ approach to antisemitic crimes.
By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News
A just-published, government-backed report found that antisemitism is becoming ‘increasingly normalized’ in the UK, and demanded immediate action to combat the phenomenon.
Lord John Mann, the Labour government’s independent anti-Semitism adviser, and former Conservative defense secretary Dame Penny Mordaunt, took on a six-month long investigation commissioned by the Jewish community’s primary umbrella group, the Board of Deputies of British Jews.
“We heard about the noisy demonstrations and how intimidating people find the current environment, but as we dug deeper, what really scared us was the increasing normalization of far more extreme, personalized and sometimes life-changing impact directed at individuals purely and simply because they are Jewish,” the distinguished peers said in an interview in The Telegraph Saturday.
Antisemitism was particularly prevalent in the National Health System (NHS), in higher education, and in the arts, they found.
“Many Jewish employees within NHS organizations” felt that their complaints of abuse by colleagues were being “swept under the carpet,” they said, while such cases skyrocketed.
On college campuses, just as in the U.S., there were record numbers of students and faculty being threatened and even physically assaulted.
Meanwhile, leading unions in both fields have passed anti-Israel resolutions that Jewish members felt were antisemitic.
In the arts, a field replete with progressive proponents who have adopted wholesale the pro-Palestinian narrative, the researchers found “substantial evidence” of Jewish performers being “cancelled” and suffering discrimination.
Recently, there have also been antisemitic outbursts by British musicians who have led audiences of thousands in chants against Israel, but even as Prime Minister Keir Starmer called it “appalling hate speech” no legal action has been taken against them to date.
Of particular concern to the authors was how the police are treating the problem that British Jews were often being “held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government,” and antisemitic incidents have exploded.
Since the Israel-Hamas war was sparked on October 7, 2023 after the terrorist organization massacred 1,200 people in Israeli towns, kibbutzim and a music festival, there have been almost weekly demonstrations against the Jewish state in London.
The Community Security Trust, a Jewish non-profit that is involved in protecting the community, has often pointed out that the authorities treat anti-Israel protestors with kid gloves and do not make arrests even when they are violent, intimidate passersby, deface public property with graffiti, or demonstrate without the proper permits.
Among its ten recommendations to deal more effectively with anti-Jewish prejudice, the report said that the authorities’ approach to antisemitic crimes should be completely revamped.
There must be “a consistent standard and understanding of anti-Semitism across all police forces throughout the country,” which is that Jew-hatred is “a form of racism,” the report said.
Another recommendation was that Judaism should be nationally recognized as an ethnicity as well as a religion, so that anti-discrimination and anti-hate laws can be more easily applied to offenders.
A third proposal was for all employers to have their workers undergo an “Anti-Semitism Training Qualification” so that they will recognize when their behavior might cross the line.
“If Britain’s Jewish community is experiencing discrimination, it is evidence of a profound failure within British society itself,” said Mann and Mordant, who noted that they come from opposite sides of the political aisle but were equally “stunned into silence” over the results of their research.
Deputy Prime Minister Angela Rayner had “welcomed” the Board of Deputies’ Commission on Antisemitism when it was announced in November, and vowed to “look closely at its recommendations as part of our work to keep communities safe.”
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