Spat at, threatened and kidnapped: British Jews tell of rising antisemitism

Excluding Jews "doesn't make us any safer", she says. "It just removes us from life."

Amanda is one of more than a dozen Jewish people from a range of UK communities who have spoken to Panorama - including an NHS midwife, a student and a musician who was kidnapped.

They describe a rising undercurrent of antisemitism across society. Police and policy experts tasked with tackling antisemitism believe this has helped create the conditions for the most serious anti-Jewish hate crimes in recent British history, including the Manchester synagogue attack that left two men dead.

In north London, recent targeting of Jewish premises has also heightened fears - including an arson attack last month on ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity in Golders Green and attempted arson last week on a synagogue in Finchley Over the weekend, there were arson attempts on a business in Hendon and a synagogue in Kenton.

The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that provides advice and security for Jewish communities and monitors antisemitism in the UK, says it is receiving record numbers of reports of antisemitism.

Last year, it received 3,700 reports of incidents of malicious acts aimed at Jewish people or organisations, it says, more than 10 a day - making the annual total second only to 2023, when there were almost 4,300.

Across England and Wales, police recorded 10,065 religiously motivated hate crimes for the year ending March 2025, according to the latest Home Office figures.

The Muslim community was the most targeted group with 4,478 cases - including a spike in Islamophobic hate crimes following the Southport knife attack.

However Jewish people, with a much smaller population, experienced more than eight times as many hate-crime incidents per head of population as Muslims.

Laura, 62, a midwife in London, says she feels unsafe going to work.

She has spent years campaigning for more culturally sensitive maternity care for Jewish mothers, including educating NHS staff on antisemitism. But following a number of incidents where doctors have been suspended and struck off over antisemitic remarks, she is worried some wards have become less safe for Jewish staff.

"I think it's very hard to be openly Jewish in the NHS without feeling a degree of fear and that you may not be psychologically safe with some of your colleagues," she says.

Laura posts about her work on social media and says she has also experienced personal abuse online - directed towards her and other Jewish midwives.

"I've been called racist. I've had various sort of slurs. I've been called a Zio."

Zio is a pejorative abbreviation for Zionist.

"There are also Nazi-type tropes - that kind of inversion is incredibly distressing.

"All I've been trying to do is explain what the Jewish experience is, living through these very tumultuous times."

There is also concern about antisemitism on university campuses. One in five students of all backgrounds said they would not be open to house-sharing with a Jewish person, according to a recent survey of 1,000 students for the Union of Jewish Students.

Avital, 21, who studies at a university in the north of England, says some of her friends have had to leave their accommodation because of comments made by flatmates.

"It's creating an environment where Jewish students are isolated from others purely because of the fact they are Jewish," she says.

Avital organises events for her university's Jewish Society and says she finds it depressing that their social events require security.

"When we host a party with drinks and music, which is meant to be entirely fun, a number of students have to stand outside with stab-proof vests and count the number of people going in and make sure that no-one's trying to bother what is essentially a student house party.

"It's just not normal."

One of the more extreme examples of antisemitic attacks was the kidnapping of London-based Israeli record producer Itay Kashti.

In 2024, Itay received an email from what looked like a record company inviting him to a songwriting camp at a property in the Welsh countryside.

When he arrived in a taxi, the driver helped him in with his luggage, at which point they were both attacked by three masked men. The driver managed to get away, but Itay was handcuffed to a radiator. He eventually managed to free himself and escape.

"I went out of the cottage and I was covered in blood and my shirt was completely torn," he recalls.

The taxi driver had alerted police, and three men were arrested. All three pleaded guilty to kidnap and were each jailed for eight years and one month.

The judge said Itay "was targeted due to his Jewish heritage", with the kidnappers "motivated by events taking place elsewhere in the world".

Itay says "there's a lot of prejudice against Jewish people in general, and Israel in particular".

"People may like or not like their politics in the same way I don't like the politics in Israel," he adds. "You can like or dislike the politics of the country. But it doesn't mean you need to judge the individual people that come out of it on that basis."

Cases like Itay's are extreme and rare - but there are fears antisemitism is being normalised and that, in turn, could pave the way for serious violence, even terror.

The government has acknowledged the rise in antisemitism across multiple sectors of society. In the past six months, it has launched reviews into anti-Jewish hatred and other forms of racism within the NHS, in schools and colleges in England, and into whether existing laws protect communities at protests.

"I think that hatred in the public sphere towards Jews has made them more acceptable as a target for terrorism," says Jonathan Hall KC, the government's independent reviewer of terror legislation.

"The whole debate between freedom of speech and preventing hate cuts to the heart of what the government is now considering."

The specific review into public order and hate crimes - due to be completed next month - is looking at the balance between the right to protest and the need to protect communities.

Hall says existing laws are adequate and the challenge is for the police and Crown Prosecution Service to enforce them. There has been, he says, "undue caution".

Laurence Taylor, head of Counter Terrorism Policing, told Panorama he was "acutely aware" of concerns from members of the Jewish community and "where people do break the law, we will put all our investigative effort into dealing with that".

Tens of thousands of people, including some Jews, have taken to UK streets to protest against Israeli military action in Gaza and show support for Palestinians.

Some chants and placards have left many British Jews feeling under threat. According to some protestors, the phrase "Globalise the Intifada" is a call for an uprising against injustice. But for many Jews, it is seen as a call for violent action against them wherever they are.

Since 2023, more than 3,500 people have been arrested on pro-Palestinian protests and marches, nearly 3,000 of them in London, according to the Metropolitan Police.

The Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) and the Stop the War Coalition have helped organise many of the marches. The PSC said in a statement, endorsed by Stop the War, that it "unequivocally condemns antisemitism, Islamophobia and all forms of discrimination" and it rejects "any suggestion that [its] marches constitute harassment of Jewish people".

Community leaders from the Jewish faith and other religions agree on the importance of interfaith dialogue, but say this has become a lot more difficult since the the Hamas-led attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023.

About 1,200 people were killed and 251 others were taken hostage. Israel responded by launching a military campaign in Gaza in which more than 72,330 people have been killed, according to the territory's Hamas-run health ministry.

"I think a lot of Jews are quite frightened of making those relationships with Muslims and Christians. People are more worried about security," says Baroness Julia Neuberger, who was ordained in 1977 as the second female rabbi in the UK.

"And the other thing is that I think there's increasing nervousness, unwillingness, unhappiness, particularly amongst Muslims, but to some extent amongst Christians too, about entering this dialogue, because they don't know what to do.

"Are they supposed to talk about Gaza? Are they not supposed to about Gaza? How do you deal with all of that?"

Daniel Walker, the rabbi of the Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester which was attacked last October, stresses the importance of dialogue between those of different faiths and perspectives.

"One of the beauties of our society was that we believed that we had the right to have hugely different opinions, to disagree entirely over very fundamental things, and yet still to do so with respect and with tolerance. I think we're losing that as a society as a whole."

However, while many Jews are mulling whether they see their futures in the UK, Rabbi Walker, remains hopeful.

"Whilst recognising that things are not OK, I am relentlessly positive," he says.

"I'm often called naïve for that. But that's what I believe, and I believe my personal experience and my community experience bears that out.

"There are lots of good people in this country, in our society, and I choose to believe… that society will become a better place.

"I'm going to pray that I'm right."