Poll: Almost half of Brits believe Israel treats Palestinians the way Nazis treated Jews

More than one in five British adults now hold entrenched antisemitic views, according to a survey published Sunday, while almost half think Israel treats the Palestinians like the Nazis treated the Jews.

The poll, conducted by YouGov in collaboration with Campaign Against Antisemitism (CAA), found that 21 percent of the British public agrees with at least four antisemitic statements. That was nearly double the level recorded in 2021, and the highest figure since the survey was first taken a decade ago.

Results are based on an online survey conducted on September 1-2. The results were published ahead of CAA’s march against antisemitism scheduled for Sunday afternoon, and a day after London police said they had arrested around 425 people at a demonstration in support of Palestine Action, a pro-Palestinian group proscribed by the government as a terrorist organization.

Nearly half of respondents (45%) said they believe Israel treats Palestinians like Nazis treated Jews, a sharp rise from 33% last year. Among 18- to 24-year-olds, that figure reached as high as 60%.

“This is one of the most common antisemitic tropes that we see,” CAA said. “It both trivializes the Holocaust, in which six million Jews were industrially slaughtered, and insultingly accuses victims of the crime committed against them of perpetrating it.”

Overall, half (51%) of the British public, and 60% of young people, believe that antisemitism has increased in the UK since October 2023. Fifty-four percent said they do not know what “Zionism” means.

Young Britons expressed particularly troubling views. Almost half (49%) said they were uncomfortable spending time with people who openly support Israel, and only 31% agreed that Israel has a right to exist as a Jewish homeland. Nearly a fifth (19%) of young people said Hamas’s October 7, 2023, attack on Israel, in which the terror organization killed some 1,200 people and kidnapped 251, was justified.

About 10% of young people expressed a favorable view of Hamas, and 14% said they opposed classifying it as a terrorist organization.

“Our country is clearly at a tipping point,” a CAA spokesperson said. “These are the highest antisemitism figures that we have ever recorded, having doubled in less than five years. Our young people are being radicalized into adopting hateful ideologies before our eyes. Britain will lose its soul to extremists unless the silent majority wakes up.”

The country is divided on the frequent pro-Palestine marches, with 32% viewing them negatively and 29% viewing them positively. However, a significant 69% said they believe the marches are achieving not very much or nothing at all, and 58% believe that the organizers of the protests should bear the costs of policing and clean-up, rather than taxpayers.

Participants in the survey were asked to respond to 12 statements — six relating to Judeophobic antisemitism and six relating to anti-Zionist antisemitism, as prescribed in the Generalised Antisemitism Scale devised by Daniel Allington of King’s College London, David Hirsh of Goldsmiths, and Louise Katz (then) of the University of Derby.

The study was published as antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom continue to hover near record levels.

In the first half of 2025, some 1,521 antisemitic incidents were recorded, the second-highest total ever for a six-month period, after the same period in 2024, according to the Community Security Trust (CST), a nonprofit providing security protection to British Jews.

The highest number of incidents came in June, the month in which Israel fought its 12-day preemptive military campaign against Iran’s nuclear program. The highest daily total came on June 29, the day after the punk-rap duo Bob Vylan led mass chanting of “Death, Death to the IDF” at the Glastonbury Festival.