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.
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