Police recorded 3,162 hate crimes against Jews in a year. The count does not say how many were attacks on Jews and how many were words about Israel.

Antisemitism is real in Britain. On Yom Kippur last year, 2 October 2025, Jihad Al-Shamie drove into the gate of Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester armed with two knives. Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby were killed. In 2025 CST recorded 170 assaults on Jewish people, 68 cases of damage to the homes and cars of Jewish people, 25 to synagogues, and 70 incidents involving Jewish children away from school, usually on their way to or from home. People shouted “Free Palestine” at Jewish strangers in the street at least 148 times, for no reason but that they looked Jewish. That is hatred of Jews. It has to be stopped.

The count that is meant to measure that hatred now takes in something else as well. The police record a hate crime whenever anyone at all perceives one. CST, the charity that swaps reports with the police, counts a placard comparing Israel to the Nazis as an antisemitic incident. Since December, Met guidance obtained under Freedom of Information has told officers that the Arabic word for resistance should be investigated. Nobody, not the Home Office and not the Met, publishes how many of the 3,162 crimes recorded last year were Jews attacked for being Jewish.

That is the damage. A count that merges a state carrying out a genocide with Jewish people hides the victims it exists to protect. A Jewish child shouted at on the way to school and a placard about the Israeli army can end up in the same total, and the total does not say which is which.

3,162 crimes, and not one word about what they were

On 8 October the Home Office published the police figures for the year to March 2026. Forces in England and Wales recorded 3,162 religious hate crimes against Jews, up 10% from 2,874. They recorded 5,132 against Muslims, up 15%. On crimes against Jews, in the Home Office’s words:

“These spiked in October 2025, following a series of antisemitic crimes after the Heaton Park Synagogue terror attack and have been at an elevated level since the beginning of the Israel-Hamas conflict.”

Home Office, Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2026

For each crime the Home Office publishes four things: the religion the police believe was targeted, the type of offence, the force and the month. It publishes nothing about what was said, written or shown, and nothing about which definition the officer used. So the official count cannot tell you how many of the 3,162 were Jews attacked or abused for being Jewish, and how many were words about Israel. The Home Office has never published that breakdown.

How a crime gets into the count

The count is built in four steps. Each step has its own rule.

1. 1

   Somebody reports it

   A hate crime is “any criminal offence which is perceived, by the victim or any other person, to be motivated by hostility or prejudice towards someone based on a personal characteristic”. Any other person means anyone: a passer-by, an officer, an organisation.

2. 2

   CST and the police swap reports, both ways

   CST runs a third-party reporting service, so it can report crimes to the police for victims who will not go to them directly. Under a national Information Sharing Agreement with the National Police Chiefs’ Council, in force since 2015 and renewed in February 2026, the police send CST “Anonymised details of incidents/crimes relating to, or believed to be targeted at the Jewish community”, with details of any arrests. In 2025 a technical fault stopped reports reaching CST from the Met.

3. 3

   The force records a crime and flags it

   The force records which religion it believes was targeted. In the Home Office’s words, the figures are “dependent on a flag being correctly applied”. The police say they record to the hate crime definition, but “believe the working definition provides a useful guide as to how antisemitism may manifest itself in our society”. The working definition is the IHRA one.

4. 4

   The Home Office adds it up

   It publishes the religion, the offence type, the force and the month. Nothing about what was said, written or shown.

Nobody publishes how many of the 3,162 crimes began as a report from CST. CST does not say. The forces do not say. The Home Office does not ask.

Nothing outside the police count can check it

The police recorded 117 religious hate crimes against Jews for every 10,000 Jewish people in England and Wales, and 13 against Muslims for every 10,000 Muslims. By police records, a Jewish person is almost nine times as likely as a Muslim to be the target.

The only independent measure is the government’s victim survey, which asks people directly what happened to them. The Home Office quotes it in the same bulletin, and it points the other way: it “estimated that 0.8% of Muslims experienced a religious hate crime per year on average, compared with 0.4% of Jewish people”. But the survey interviewed 358 Jewish adults across three years, and 0.4% of 358 people is fewer than two. The Home Office warns that the ranges around these estimates are “relatively large” and that “care needs to be taken in making comparisons over time, and between the monitored strands”. The survey cannot confirm the police figure for Jews and cannot overturn it. Nothing outside the police count checks it.

The survey also leaves out public order offences, which make up 45% of the crimes against Jews: offences of public fear, alarm or distress under the Public Order Act 1986. Those cover words, signs and behaviour in public, and the Home Office notes that in some offences “there might not have been an identifiable victim (for public order offences, for example)”.

The share is similar for crimes against Muslims, at 50%, so public order offences alone do not explain the count. What decides whether a placard counts as hostility to Jews is the definition somebody applies to it. The Home Office does not record that. CST does publish it.

CST’s breakdown, tested against CST’s own definition

CST’s annual report is the only public breakdown of what goes into an antisemitism count. It covers a different set from the Home Office: CST counts incidents, crimes and non-crimes, across the whole UK, in calendar year 2025, where the Home Office counts crimes in England and Wales in the year to March 2026. It is the same kind of count, built from reports that pass between CST and the police.

CST recorded 3,700 antisemitic incidents in 2025. 1,977 of them, 53%, were linked to Israel, Palestine, 7 October or the war. In 2022 that share was 15%. CST adds: “Each of these cases also evidenced anti-Jewish language, motivation or targeting.”

CST deserves credit for where it draws its line. It does not normally count accusations of genocide or apartheid:

“incidents that compare Israel to, for example, apartheid South Africa, would not normally be recorded as antisemitic incidents, nor would claims that Israel has committed a genocide in Gaza (unless allusions are directly made to the genocide carried out by the Nazis)”

CST, Antisemitic Incidents Report 2025

It also set aside 3,001 reports in 2025 that showed no antisemitism, including what it calls ordinary anti-Israel rhetoric and activism.

But CST also writes: “The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism is a useful guide in identifying the different types of antisemitic language that may be used in an incident.” The IHRA definition lists, as an example of antisemitism, “Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis.” CST follows it:

“incidents that equate Israel to Nazi Germany would normally be recorded as antisemitic because the comparison is so deeply hurtful and abusive, using Israel’s self-definition as a Jewish state as the basis for the insult”

CST, Antisemitic Incidents Report 2025

The police lean on the same guide. In 2014 the College of Policing’s hate crime guidance printed the earlier version of the definition in full, with “drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis” among its examples, and told officers:

“The ongoing political conflict between Israel and Palestine has led to a new antisemitism, sometimes also referred to as anti-Zionism.”

College of Policing, Hate Crime Operational Guidance, 2014, page 36

Its current guidance points officers to the IHRA definition, and the police hate crime service says officers treat it as “a useful guide”.

Read CST’s reason. Israel calls itself a Jewish state, so an insult to the state is counted as an attack on Jews. That is the same mistake CST condemns when someone shouts “Free Palestine” at a Jewish stranger: treating a British Jew as a stand-in for Israel. CST is right about the stranger. With the Nazi comparison it makes the same mistake from the other side.

Here is every Israel-related line CST publishes, tested against CST’s own definition of an antisemitic incident: “any malicious act aimed at Jewish people, organisations or property, where there is evidence that the act has antisemitic motivation or content, or that the victim was targeted because they are (or are believed to be) Jewish”.

So here is what CST’s own figures show. At most 387 incidents, 10.5% of CST’s total, were counted under a rule whose stated reason is something other than a Jewish person being targeted. Some of those compared Jewish people, not the state, to the Nazis, and those are antisemitic by any test, so the real figure is lower. CST does not publish the split. The rest of the 1,977 Israel-related incidents nobody outside CST can check.

That is a smaller number than many will expect. It is what the evidence shows, and it is the only part of the count anyone outside CST and the police can see.

The Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism, written in 2021 by scholars of antisemitism and the Holocaust, draws the line where CST’s own definition does. It defines antisemitism as “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).” Its thirteenth guideline says that “even if contentious, it is not antisemitic, in and of itself, to compare Israel with other historical cases, including settler-colonialism or apartheid.” It says nothing about comparisons between Israel and the Nazis, either way, so the verdict on CST’s 387 rests on CST’s own definition, not on the Declaration.

The rule moved

In five months the Met changed what it tells officers to arrest people for.

1. July 2025

   The Met’s internal guidance on protest chants says an intifada chant could be an offence if the officer believes the wording calls for a violent uprising. It records the Crown Prosecution Service’s view that the word:

   “is an expression of political support for Palestine and does not have negative racial connotations”

   Declassified UK, 19 March 2026, from Met guidance released under Freedom of Information

2. 2 October 2025

   Jihad Al-Shamie attacks Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur. Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby are killed. Police declare a terrorist incident.

   Counter Terrorism Policing

3. 14 December 2025

   Gunmen open fire on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney and kill 15 people.

   ABC News, 17 December 2025

4. 17 December 2025, morning

   The Met Commissioner and the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police say they will arrest people who chant “globalise the intifada”. They say what prosecutors had told them first:

   “We have consistently been advised by the CPS that many of the phrases causing fear in Jewish communities don’t meet prosecution thresholds. Now, in the escalating threat context, we will recalibrate to be more assertive.”

   Joint statement by the Met Commissioner and the Chief Constable of Greater Manchester Police, 17 December 2025

5. 17 December 2025

   CST welcomes the announcement, in a statement reported by Reuters, and asks police across the country and the CPS to follow suit:

   “For many years, CST has called for tougher action against hateful and violent chants and placards at protests and this announcement comes not a moment too soon”

   Times of Israel and Reuters, 17 December 2025

6. 17 December 2025, evening

   The Met arrests five people at a protest outside the Ministry of Justice. Four are arrested for racially aggravated public order offences:

   “all involving the alleged shouting or chanting of slogans involving calls for intifada”

   Metropolitan Police on X, 17 December 2025

7. December 2025

   Revised Met guidance tells officers they will be expected to take decisive action over “globalise the intifada”, which it says carries a real risk of stirring up antisemitism. Declassified UK reports that the same guidance says the words inqilaba (revolution) and muqawama (resistance) should be investigated, and could be offences where police perceive a call for the destruction of Israel or support for Hamas, and that officers are told to seize phones to search for content. The Met told Declassified the words are not offences when said in support of self-defence.

   Declassified UK, 19 March 2026, from Met guidance released under Freedom of Information

8. 26 January 2026

   Three people from the protest, aged 24, 21 and 60, are charged with stirring up racial hatred under section 18(1) of the Public Order Act 1986. No further action is taken against a 17-year-old boy.

   Crown Prosecution Service, 26 January 2026

9. 25 February 2026

   All three plead not guilty and are sent for trial at Southwark Crown Court. We found no report of a verdict.

   Middle East Eye, 25 February 2026

In July the Met’s own guidance recorded the prosecutors’ view that intifada is political support for Palestine. In December the Met and GMP said prosecutors had told them many of these phrases did not meet the threshold for prosecution, and announced arrests anyway. The words did not change. The rule did, after an attack on Jews in Manchester and an attack on Jews in Sydney. CST, in its own words, had called for it “for many years”.

Every arrest under the new rule is a recorded crime, and a crime flagged as hostile to Jews goes into the count. The more speech the rule covers, the higher the count goes, whether or not one more Jewish person is attacked.

Who has been arrested for words

We could document 10 cases from court reports, police statements and the press, where the conduct was words or a placard about Israel, Palestine or Zionism. One ended in a conviction: a refugee who pleaded guilty, through an Arabic interpreter, over a placard the court was told she picked up at a bus stop. In January the Met arrested the human rights campaigner Peter Tatchell for a placard that read “Globalise the intifada: Non-violent resistance. End Israel’s occupation of Gaza & West Bank”. It dropped the case in April. Most of the rest have no charge reported. For many protest arrests the police never published the words, so they could not be checked and are not here.

What must happen now

1. The Home Office asks forces to record, and then publishes, whether each religious hate crime involved violence, damage, abuse aimed at a person, or words or signs at a protest, so the count shows how many Jews were attacked. In its next release, in October 2027.
2. The College of Policing takes the IHRA definition out of its hate crime guidance, and tells officers in plain words that speech about the Israeli state, Zionism or Palestinian resistance is not, on its own, hostility to Jews. By 9 November 2026.
3. CST publishes its Israel-related incidents by category, splits its 387 Nazi comparisons between the state and Jewish people, says how many it counted on the comparison alone, and says how many reports it passed to the police. By 9 November 2026.
4. The Met and Greater Manchester Police publish their guidance on protest chants in full, with every version since July 2025, and list who they consulted before 17 December 2025. By 9 November 2026.

Antisemitism is real. A count that cannot tell an attack on a Jewish child from a placard about the Israeli army fails the child first.

Sources: Home Office, Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2026, 8 October 2026 (data tables 2c, 3, 4 and 5b, note 1, and the bulletin); CST, Antisemitic Incidents Report 2025, 11 February 2026; Home Office, Hate crime, England and Wales, year ending March 2025 (Appendix Table 17); NPCC and CST Information Sharing Agreement; True Vision; College of Policing, Hate Crime Operational Guidance (2014); Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism; IHRA working definition of antisemitism; the timeline and census sources linked in place.