A year marked by trauma and grief – and questions about what it means to be Jewish in Britain | Dave Rich

We have had so many emotions: empathy for Israelis and Palestinians, but also deep worry about our lives and relationships here

“Good morning darling,” said the anonymous phone caller to the administrator at my local synagogue last week. “I just wanted to know how much you charge for the kids’ blood that you drink, I wanted to place an order.”

It’s the blood libel revived: a medieval anti-Jewish myth invented almost 900 years ago, reheated for 2024 – in the cauldron of emotions kept boiling away by conflict in Israel and Palestine. I’d call this unusual, except it is a lot less unusual than it used to be. Anti-Jewish hate crime skyrocketed after the Hamas attack on Israel last year and still hasn’t returned to what we used to consider “normal”. There have been almost as many antisemitic incidents in the year since 7 October 2023 as there were in the whole of 2020, 2021 and 2022 combined, according to figures from the Community Security Trust.

Dave Rich is director of policy at the Community Security Trust and the author of Everyday Hate: How antisemitism is built into our world – and how you can change it

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