Antisemitism, both on and offline, is on the rise. Scarily on the rise. Community Security Trust recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents across the UK in the first half of 2025, the second-highest total ever reported to the charity in the first six months of any year. And the number feels all the more shocking when you consider that Jewish people make up just 0.5% of the UK population. You might not have known that if you aren't Jewish, because, very often, this specific form of racism is overlooked.
But I can't think of one person I know who hasn't been impacted, either directly or through the fallout of an attack on a family member. Most recently, a photo of my daughter (at the time just six months old) on Instagram received a comment from a stranger, reading, “Eugh, just what the world doesn't need, another Jew.” The comment wasn't from a bot or an anonymous account; it was from an emboldened human being (who seemed to also use his profile as a professional portfolio for his photography), who felt it was appropriate to channel their hate of an entire religion toward a baby. Needless to say, I reported it to the police, and they, thankfully, cautioned the commenter.
But he isn't alone. Over the past few years, in correlation with the Hamas terrorist attack on 7th October and Israel's ongoing bombing of the Gaza Strip, more and more people have felt rallied and safe to spout antisemitic rhetoric online and in public. According to the monitoring charity Community Security Trust (CST), the UK recorded 4,103 antisemitic incidents in 2023, more than double the figure in 2022 — and two‑thirds of those (2,699) took place on or after 7 October 2023, the date of the Hamas terrorist attack on Israel. The CST described the surge as “a seismic effect … that outweighs the impact of previous wars involving Israel.”
Their written evidence to Parliament notes that “every escalation of the regional conflict triggers a rise in antisemitic incidents directed towards the local British Jewish community,” adding that the initial 2023 spike differed because the conflict has lasted so long and that the baseline level of incidents remains higher than before the war.
Tropes often repeated range from the Jewish blood libel, an antisemitic myth that falsely claims Jews murder Christians to use their blood for religious rituals to insisting Jews run the world's media (likely spouting from claims made in The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, an antisemitic book used to promote hatred of Jews, published in 1903.
I recently tried to explain to a friend just how upsetting these tropes were for myself, my family members and Jewish friends. “Why though?” they asked. “They're basically just saying that Jews have loads of power, I don't really see what's wrong with that? Power is a good thing. It's not personal to you specifically.”
Their comment circulated in my head for the rest of the day, not because I'd never heard it before, but because I was fed up with hearing comments like this repeatedly. I went to a Jewish school and was largely shielded from antisemitism in the wider community, but as soon as I hit university, my eyes were opened.
“Oh, you're Jewish? You must have an amazing house,” my new flatmate enthused during our first freshers' week drink. While another ran over to me at a bar some months later to tell me, with a huge grin on their face, that they'd managed to “wangle” free drinks: “I thought you'd be proud of my Jewish instincts coming out,” they added, as though I would respond with a huge pat on the back and an honorary membership card. And more people than I can count have ‘reassuringly’ told me that I needn't worry because “I don't look Jewish,” as if they were bestowing upon me a genetic accolade of the greatest merit.
And the crucial thing about all these comments? The people saying them seemed to frame them as compliments. It's part of a phenomenon linked to hatred of Jews that David Baddiel explains as “punching up" in his book Jews Don't Count. The key to understanding this concept is this: Jews are not seen as underprivileged or marginalised; we are caricatured as rich capitalists. We are also thought of predominantly as “too white” for progressive social justice campaigners. Long-held, “subtle and unconscious” antisemitic tropes in society are now so ingrained that many now hold these as truths (e.g. all Jews are wealthy). However, due to the fact that they do not specifically outline us as the ‘underdogs’ (how can a rich person who controls the media be an underdog, right?!), many people don't regard these tropes as offensive or antisemitic.
But the problem is, they are, and it only takes a quick delve into the history of antisemitism and the treatment of Jews to see that so many of the ‘comments framed as compliments’ that fellow Jewish people and I have received are just as antisemitic in their origin as any of Kanye West's statements.
To help illustrate exactly what I mean and educate both Jewish people and non-Jewish people on where these tropes come from, I spoke to Binyomin Gilbert, Programme Manager for Campaign Against Antisemitism, a volunteer-led charity dedicated to exposing and countering antisemitism through education and zero-tolerance enforcement of the law (and the people behind that petition to get Adidas to cut ties with Ye).
Below, he talks me through exactly where each, perhaps well-intentioned but nevertheless harmful, Jewish trope comes from so that we might all arm ourselves as allies to call out and educate wherever we can.
I'm blonde with blue eyes, and because of this, I am often surprised when I explain that I am Jewish. Over the years, variations of “Don't worry, you don't look Jewish,” or “But you're blonde?” have come up repeatedly. They seem to infer that somehow, I have managed to dodge this piece of ‘bad luck’ and have managed to, thankfully, look more like a normal human.
“Jews are often depicted as having particular features, especially exaggerated large or hooked noses, but also certain hairstyles and other features,” Binyomin explains. “Some historians have traced the nose caricature in particular back to the thirteenth century CE, with some medieval depictions of the devil supervising the Crucifixion of Christ eventually merging with contemporary and later portrayals of Jews, who were also imagined as having been indifferent to or supportive of the Crucifixion, putting them on the same side as satan against divinity.”
“There was also a further theological aspect, as Jews were believed to deal only with – and represent – the physical, material world and not the higher, spiritual realm that was supposed to be the concern of Christians, and grotesque features were a physical representation of that lowliness,” he adds. "Later, in the nineteenth century, big Jewish noses started to interest scientists who studied the supposed physical characteristics of different ‘races’, and in the twentieth century, ‘Jewish noses’ would become a vital part of the visual style of Nazi propaganda, especially in the crude caricatures of Jews from the notorious publication Der Stürmer."
The crucial point here is that some Jewish people do have larger noses, and some don't, in the same way as any other race or religion might have larger or smaller facial features depending on any number of gene variations. It is largely due to prior propaganda that society upholds the view that all Jews look a certain way.
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I touched on various comments about wealth and success made to me at university, but they haven't just been confined to the walls of higher education. In my first ever job, a fresh-faced 21-year-old who thought I was about to change the world with my mediocre degree and singular summer job, my manager asked me “Why [I] even needed to work” if my parents were Jewish and on occasions too numerous to count I have been congratulated on a “savvy” business move before having it immediately chalked up to my being Jewish.
Similarly, at work drinks one Thursday evening, a colleague (one who I still really like, by the way) patted me on the back and said, “Don't worry, I trust you to hold my wallet” before telling me in a jolly tone that I probably don't need it anyway as my “Batmitzvah money” will be stowed away somewhere.
At the time, I didn't have the vocabulary to explain why I felt so hurt, but I have done so, much to said colleague's dismay.
“The trope of Jews being wealthy and greedy has roots in Christian motifs, such as Judas betraying Jesus for thirty pieces of silver,” Binyomin says. “But it was in the Middle Ages that the trope really took off, as Jews were limited in what professions they were permitted to adopt by Christian rules, while Christians were barred from lending to one another with interest. The Jews thus ended up as moneylenders in medieval society, provoking the ire of their debtors, who had both the material grievance of having to pay back their loans and also the spiritual revulsion at the ungodly practice of usury that the Jews were forced to provide. This was a key factor in some of the expulsions of the Jews from European countries in the period, not to mention numerous massacres.”
“Later, Karl Marx propagated a secularised version of this association of Jews with money and greed, with the Jews cast as the exploitative Capitalists against whom Communists had to struggle,” he adds.
"The result today is that Jews continue to be associated with wealth (including some more specific tropes like the Rothschilds), miserliness, financial shrewdness, greediness and so forth.
“Not only is it a damaging negative stereotype, but it also makes it harder to shine a light on Jewish poverty, which exists in all communities and is particularly acute in some places. Not only does one have to contend with the difficult, standard policy questions wherever poverty arises, but even in order to raise those questions in connection with the Jewish community, one must also overcome the common prejudice that Jews cannot be poor.”
Like all forms of racism, you don't have to launch a violent attack on a minority race or religion to be guilty of reinforcing damaging, dangerous and untrue racial stereotypes in society. Sometimes, it's about unpicking the ‘truths’ you never thought to question before and quietly but confidently eradicating them from your own understanding of what is acceptable.
