Anti-Semitic incidents in UK hit record high

The Jewish community of the United Kingdom records 767 anti-Semitic attacks in the first half of 2017 — the highest figure recorded in the same six-month period since monitoring began in 1984.

The total number of incidents recorded from Jan. 1 to July 1 by the Community Security Trust, British Jewry’s watchdog on anti-Semitism, constitute an increase of 30 percent from the 589 incidents from the same time period of 2016, CST writes in a report published Thursday. The number last year was itself an increase of 18% from the 501 incidents recorded during the first half of 2015.

CST has recorded 80 violent assaults in 2017, a 78% rise from the 45 over the first six months of 2016 and the highest number CST has ever recorded for the January to July period.

In one incident, unidentified individuals threw a brick with the word “Jew” and a swastika painted on it into the home of a Jewish family in the London borough of Edgware on Shabbat. No one was hurt in the incident.

— JTA