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Anti-Semitic attacks in London double in a year

Police said there were a total of 459 anti-Semitic crimes in 2014/15, more than double the previous year’s total of 193 offences.

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The CST – a charity that monitors anti-semitism – said the 473 recorded incidents included 44 violent assaults and two involving “extreme violence”.

Rises were also recorded by forces in Merseyside, the West Midlands, West Yorkshire, Hertfordshire and Lincolnshire.

Home Secretary Theresa May said: “I know that many Jewish people in this country are concerned about safety in their community, and we are listening”.

Mrs May said the government would act against “all those who seek to divide our country and sow discord”.

Terrorist attacks in Europe earlier this year prompted a leap in the number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in the UK, a Jewish charity reports.

Gunmen killed four shoppers at a kosher supermarket in Paris and a security guard at the main synagogue in Copenhagen this year.

CST recorded 309 antisemitic incidents during the first six months of 2014, which was itself an increase of 38 per cent from the 223 antisemitic incidents recorded during the first six months of 2013.

“The terrorist attacks on European Jews earlier this year, following the high levels of anti-semitism in 2014, were a hard and unsettling experience for our Jewish community”, CST Chief Executive David Delew said.

In Greater Manchester, anti-semitic reports increased from 82 to 172. Half the incidents this year have been cases of verbal abuse, often shouted from a passing auto and directed at Jews wearing religious or traditional clothing, Jewish school uniforms or jewellery.

The CST put 2014’s record number of incidents down to a reaction to the 50-day conflict in Gaza that ended last August, but said this year’s rise was likely to reflect a willingness to report cases because of heightened concerns.

That is a slight increase on the same period last year when there were 23 such reports.

Communities Minister Baroness Williams of Trafford said: “Anti-Semitism and hate crimes of any sort are not only vile, wrong and totally unacceptable in our society, but they are also an affront to the British values we hold dear…”

However, both the CST and police partly put the increase down to increased reporting by the Jewish community.

Three quarters of all incidents occurred in London and Manchester.

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Assistant Chief Constable Garry Shewan, of Greater Manchester Police, said: “The worldwide picture of increasing hostility and tension towards the Jewish community is no doubt having an influence in the UK”.

A rise in attacks on British Jews has been reported