Why the rise in antisemitic attacks in Britain matters beyond the U.K.

Great Britain saved my family from Nazism.

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On the eve of World War II, many countries, including the United States, still limited Jewish immigration. But in July 1939, my grandparents were able to flee Germany for England. They settled in London, and two years later, my mother was born. Eight years after that, they emigrated to the United States. The family they left behind died in Hitler’s death camps.

Most European Jews were unable to escape — in part, it must be pointed out, because of British policy. Many of them would have gladly taken refuge in Palestine, then a British colony. But in May 1939, the British government effectively ended Jewish immigration to the territory. Still, for my family, Britain will always be viewed fondly as a safe haven from the horrors of the Holocaust.

That fondness makes the current situation for British Jews uniquely painful. Once a nation that welcomed victims of the Nazis, today the U.K. is increasingly a place where Jews are forced to look over their shoulder and hide their Jewishness. For American Jews, what’s happening across the Atlantic offers a disquieting preview of our possible future.

Over the last 2 1/2 years, but particularly in the last few weeks, antisemitic violence and harassment have become the new normal for British Jews. Last week, in the predominantly Jewish neighborhood of Golders Green in London, two Jewish men were stabbed by a knife-wielding attacker. This violence follows multiple arson and attempted arson attacks on synagogues, Jewish businesses and a Jewish ambulance service in London. And last fall, two Jewish men died after a man attacked worshippers at a Manchester synagogue.

In 2025 there were 3,700 antisemitic incidents in the U.K., according to the Community Security Trust, which reports on antisemitic activity. That’s an extraordinary number considering that there are fewer than 300,000 British Jews. 

As British Prime Minister Kier Starmer (whose wife and children are Jewish) said last week, “People are scared to show who they are in their community, scared to go to synagogue and practice their religion, scared to go to university as a Jew, to send their children to school as a Jew, to tell their colleagues that they are Jewish.”

The situation is so bad that in response to the violence Britain raised its national terrorism ​threat level from “substantial” to “severe.”

The oft-heard explanation for this incre ase in antisemitic hate is that it’s a response to anger over the war in Gaza. Even if one accepts the argument, someone attacking a Diaspora community because they don’t like the actions of the world’s only Jewish state is collectively blaming all Jews for the actions of other Jews. That would be akin to targeting Russian emigres because of the war in Ukraine. Of course, no such attacks have taken place. Jews, however, have not been so lucky.

The more accurate explanation for the increase is that antisemitism is the world’s oldest and most enduring hatred — and Jews are being targeted because of anti-Jewish hatred. Indeed, the largest spike in antisemitic incidents in Britain came right after the attacks of Oct. 7, 2023. There was “an immediate and significant spike in recorded cases of anti-Jewish hate,” CST reports, before the thrust of Israel’s military response to the horrors of that day. There were close to 4,300 antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom in 2023 — an increase of 2.5 times over the previous year. 

It wasn’t Israel’s actions that led to increases in antisemitism. It was the murder of Israeli citizens that put Diaspora Jews in harm’s way.    

This wave of antisemitic violence is not limited to the United Kingdom. A new report out this week by the Anti-Defamation League shows that even as there was an overall decline in antisemitic incidents in the U.S. last year, violent assaults against American Jews reached the highest level since 1979. Three people were killed in antisemitic attacks, the first such deaths since 2019. More recently, a man inspired by the terrorist group Hezbollah who was armed with a gun drove a car into a Jewish community center in Michigan.

Every day, it seems, comes word of a new incident. Data compiled by the New York Police Department showed that Jews were targeted in 60% of confirmed hate crimes in the city in April — even though Jews make up a mere 10% of the population. 

Earlier in the week, Nazi swastikas were spray-painted on a Jewish community center in Queens. At New York’s New School, the university’s student senate voted to end funding for Hillel, a religious and cultural institution that serves Jewish students on campuses across the country. This is part of a larger nationwide effort to target Jewish institutions on university campuses and demand that American Jews end their support for Israel.

Today, Jewish politicians are increasingly finding themselves under attack, targeted with antisemitic slurs and death threats. According to a recent New York Times article, “Protesters have called members of Congress ‘dirty Jews’ during town hall events and thrown red liquid — meant to look like blood — on their front lawns.”

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Even a tweet put out by the children’s show “Sesame Street” marking Jewish American Heritage Month was inundated with antisemitic and anti-Israel messages.  Anyone who argues that this wave of anti-Jewish hatred is driven by opposition to Israel’s policies is kidding themselves.

In short, what has risen to crisis levels in the U.K. is increasingly becoming the norm in the United States. But while Starmer finally spoke out publicly about the wave of violence — after months of pleading from Jewish leaders — most political leaders in the U.S. are silent. President Donald Trump has had little to say about the antisemitic spike. Democratic politicians put out the usual “thoughts and prayers” statement, solemnly condemning anti-Jewish hatred when violence occurs, but few do more than that.

As the Guardian columnist Jonathan Freedland plaintively asked last week, “Where are those who are usually so vocal in their opposition to racism, now that one of Britain’s oldest minorities is facing a violent, murderous threat on the streets? Where are the actors and celebrities who ordinarily waste no time in declaring their solidarity with the oppressed, even those many thousands of miles away, now that British Jews are stabbed in London for no reason other than that they are visibly Jewish?”

The same should be asked of American cultural and political leaders. Where is the sympathy and concern for a vulnerable minority group in America? Where is the outrage that American Jews are under assault and living in fear?

Just as my mother views Britain as her refuge from antisemitism, for me it is America, which welcomed my family and gave us the opportunity to live out the American dream as Diaspora Jews.

For my family and millions of other Jews, the U.S. and Britain gave us not just a home but an opportunity to live our lives as Jews, free from fear and intimidation. That sense of belonging is increasingly under assault. Our American dream is slowly morphing into a nightmare.

Does anyone aside from American Jews care? 

Michael A. Cohen

Michael Cohen is the publisher of the newsletter Truth and Consequences and hosts the weekly podcast “That ‘70s Movie Podcast.”