To Be A Jew In The UK

The islamization of the UK. Why Jews are unsafe in Britain….

Why Britain’s Jews no longer feel at home

We are now forced to hide our identities and look over our shoulders.

By: Spiked, November 2025:

It is now over a month since Jihad Al-Shamie attacked Heaton Park synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur, leaving two Jewish men dead and more injured. And while Britain’s Jewish community is still reeling from what happened on that terrible day, the knocks just keep coming.

Mere hours after Al-Shamie’s act of Jew hatred, pro-Palestine protesters couldn’t help themselves. Instead of cancelling or even just postponing their pre-planned anti-Israel protests scheduled for later that day, they pressed ahead. They gathered in major UK cities, including Manchester itself. At a protest outside Downing Street in London, one protester was filmed saying, ‘I don’t give a fuck about the Jewish community right now’. No kidding.

In Brighton, another set of protesters chanted ‘Zionism is a crime’, while in Edinburgh, one activist held up a sign that read, ‘Punch your local Zionist’. These were protests against the very existence of the Jewish State, and they were staged on the same day a man called Jihad tried to kill as many Jews as possible.

There was no let up in the days that followed. On the Saturday after the synagogue attack, the streets of London were once again filled with what has become a routine celebration of anti-Israel hate. Each new march brings its own panoply of worrying indicators that Britain has lost its streets to the Islamo-leftist mob, from anti-Semitic placards resurrecting the blood libel to comparisons of Israelis to Nazis to the shameless promotion of Hamas and Hezbollah.

The marches are old hat for us now. And the Metropolitan Police have made it pretty clear that the Jewish community can’t rely on much help from them. Indeed, on one Saturday in April last year, Gideon Falter, the chief executive of Campaign Against Antisemitism, was walking through central London on his way home from synagogue. While passing near a pro-Palestine march, he caught the attention of the police. They had noticed he was wearing a kippah and carrying a small bag with a Star of David on it. A police officer pulled Falter aside on account of him being ‘quite openly Jewish’ and said: ‘This is a pro-Palestinian march. I am not accusing you of anything, but I am worried about the reaction to your presence.’

Just two weeks after the Manchester synagogue attack, another story came to light that reinforced the sense that the British authorities see Jews as the problem. In August, a Jewish lawyer had been arrested during a protest outside the Israeli embassy in Kensington. Although, officially, he was detained under the Public Order Act for allegedly breaching the agreed conditions of a protest, the police’s line of questioning suggests his Jewishness was the real issue. Specifically, police said the fact that he was wearing a small Star of David necklace – just two centimetres in diameter – had ‘antagonised’ pro-Palestine protesters.

The so-called pro-Palestine marches are only the half of it. The rot of anti-Semitism is infecting every aspect of public life. There were troubling scenes at Villa Park football stadium just this week, ahead of Aston Villa’s Europa League fixture against Israeli team Maccabi Tel Aviv. The local Safety Advisory Group’s decision to ban Maccabi fans from attending effectively turned the area around the ground into a battleground. The Jews and their allies opposing the ban were forced to stand in a caged-off basketball court for their own protection while hundreds of pro-Palestine activists staged an ugly protest nearby, calling Israelis ‘baby killers’ and chanting ‘Death, death to the IDF’. Prior to the match, the activists stuck up posters around the ground featuring the slogan, ‘If you see a Zionist, call the anti-terror hotline’. I wonder why they even bothered with the word ‘Zionist’.

The authorities initially said they imposed the ban for vague ‘safety’ reasons, although they have since claimed it was due to the ‘significant levels of hooliganism’ among the Maccabi fan base. If they’re thinking of the violent unrest in Amsterdam in November 2024, when Maccabi played Ajax, they should probably take a look at the recent trial of those involved that night. It showed that groups of mostly Arab men went on a pre-planned ‘Jew hunt’ of the Israeli football fans.

The decision to ban Maccabi supporters followed a campaign by various anti-Israel groups to cancel the match or ban Israeli fans from attending. The campaign was supported by pro-Palestine local councillors and local independent MP Ayoub Khan, who had previously cast doubt on the atrocities committed by Hamas on 7 October. Attempts by the government to intervene proved fruitless, and the Israeli football club announced that it would not issue any tickets to away fans even if the decision was reversed due to safety fears. As former 7 October hostage and Maccabi Tel Aviv fan Emily Damari said, it’s akin to ‘putting a big sign on the outside of a stadium saying “no Jews allowed”’.

The situation on university campuses is equally dire. At City St George’s, University of London, an Israeli economics professor, Michael Ben-Gad, has become the target of a campaign of harassment by a group of pro-Palestine students. Taking issue with the fact that Ben-Gad served in the IDF under his mandatory service in the 1980s, they have handed out flyers with the professor’s photo displayed against a blood-stained background branding him a ‘terrorist’. Masked protesters stormed his lecture, chanting ‘From the river to the sea’, and, according to Ben-Gad, one said he should be beheaded.