Incidents Targeting Jews in England and Wales Rise, Even as Overall Number of Hate Crimes Fall, New Data Shows

Hate crimes targeting Jews in England and Wales rose last year, even as the overall number of religion-related hate crimes fell, according to statistics recently released by the United Kingdom’s Home Office.

In the year ending in March 2021, the data showed there were 1,228 offenses against Jews — a seven-percent increase from the 1,205 of the previous year.

This came as the total number of religion-related hate crimes in England and Wales dropped 18 percent — from 6,856 to 5,627.

The statistics reveal that Jews were victims of more than one in five religion-related hate crimes.

Notably, the jump in antisemitic crimes took place even before the worldwide spate of Jew-hatred incidents in May that accompanied a flare-up of violence in Israel and the Gaza Strip.

A spokesperson for the UK-based Community Security Trust (CST) was quoted by Jewish News as saying, “It is alarming that religious hate crime disproportionately affects the Jewish community to this extent, and especially that anti-Jewish hate crime has gone up at a time when most religious hate crime has fallen.”

“These figures do not even cover the period in May this year when anti-Jewish incidents reported to CST hit record levels,” the spokesperson added. “This trend needs to be reversed, and the people committing these crimes must be brought to justice.”

The Home Office defines a hate crime as “any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic.”