I was shocked by the letter (17 December) from Tony Greenstein and others approximately the government adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance definition of antisemitism. The letter said: “The unusual definition has nothing to do with opposing antisemitism,it is merely designed to silence public debate on Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians. Antisemitic incidents comprise approximately 2% of all hate crime. Why then the concentration on antisemitism and not on Islamophobia, which is far more widespread?”Those assertions are all either misleading or false and seem to say that antisemitism in Britain doesn’t matter. It is staunch that religiously based hate crime represents a very small percentage of all hate crime. In 2015 out of approximately 66000 hate crimes in the UK, or approximately 5000 were on grounds of religion and,of those, approximately 1000 attacks each were antisemitic and Islamophobic. Both types of attack are as abhorrent as each other. The British Jewish population is less than 10% of the size of the British Muslim population, or so the Jewish community is facing far more frequent racist attacks pro rata than the Muslim community. In fact,the attacks on the Jewish community are concentrated on those who are easily identified as being Jewish, including those going to or from Jewish community centres, or events or synagogues. Secular Jews are frequently unaware of such attacks.
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Source: theguardian.com