From Expulsion to Exodus? Antisemitism in England's Past and Present Crisis
- Elon Gilad
- 1 day ago
- 7 min read
At 9:30 a.m. on October 2, 2025 – Yom Kippur, the holiest day in the Jewish calendar – Jihad Al-Shamie drove his vehicle into worshipers at Manchester’s Heaton Park Synagogue. The 35-year-old British citizen of Syrian descent wore a fake explosive vest and carried a knife. Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66, were killed before police shot Al-Shamie dead. Security staff and congregants had prevented his entry to the sanctuary. Hours later, the congregation completed the service in the street.
For the first time since the 1290 expulsion that lasted 365 years, Britain’s Jews are openly questioning whether their future lies outside England. The Manchester attack crystallized a crisis building since 2016 and detonated after October 7, 2023, when antisemitic incidents began an unprecedented surge. The year 2023 ended with 4,103 incidents – a 147% increase and the highest total in four decades of monitoring by the Community Security Trust (CST) – a UK charity that serves as the primary organization protecting British Jews from antisemitism. Rather than subsiding, 2024 maintained emergency levels with 3,528 incidents, while 2025 shows no return to baseline.
England’s first expulsion of its Jews in 1290 is no mere artifact; its pattern – panic, scapegoating, and official equivocation – has resurfaced in new guises.
Key points:
About half of British Jews are considering emigration – the highest on record
Campus antisemitism quintupled year-on-year; most cases used Israel discourse to target Jews
Platforms failed to act on 84% of antisemitic posts – still drawing millions of views
England’s antisemitic legacy: Patterns that persist
England was the first European state to expel its Jews. On July 18, 1290 – Tisha B’Av – Edward I ordered some 3,000 Jews to leave, forfeiting property and debts; Parliament compensated him £116,000. The pattern was set at York (1190), where about 150 Jews died as mobs sought to erase debts; the 1144 Norwich blood libel supplied the template. Readmission in 1657 came via legal ambiguity, not statute. Emancipation lagged until 1858, when Lionel de Rothschild finally took his seat under a revised oath.
Even in the 20th century, policy remained restrictive: 10,000 Kindertransport children arrived, yet approximately 30,000 Jewish refugees were interned as “enemy aliens,” and hundreds died on the Arandora Star (1940). 2014 archives show officials acknowledged rising wartime antisemitism but blamed Jews rather than intervening.
The pattern echoes across centuries: foreign events trigger domestic persecution, conspiracy theories circulate, and institutions fail to protect.
New baseline – and Labour’s failure
The contemporary crisis didn’t begin on October 7, 2023 – it accelerated an alarming trend that started in 2016, when CST recorded 1,309 incidents despite no major trigger event. By 2019, the total had hit 1,813, correlating strongly with the Labour Party antisemitism controversy that represented an unprecedented institutional failure.
In October 2020, the Equality and Human Rights Commission found Labour guilty of unlawful harassment, political interference, and inadequate training. The investigation revealed 23 instances of political interference by Corbyn’s office, with 62 of 70 complaint files missing records. The impact was profound: 85% of British Jews considered Corbyn an antisemite, 40% would “seriously consider” leaving if he became Prime Minister, and Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis called Labour “unfit for government.”
Hope Not Hate’s 2020 report “Antisemitism in the Labour Party” captured the failure’s significance: Labour held “values of equality and antiracism as core to identity” yet failed Jewish members. When institutions meant to protect minorities become sites of their persecution, the failure cascades – establishing patterns that persist long after leadership changes.
October 7: Celebration becomes persecution
The October 7, 2023, Hamas attack triggered an explosion of antisemitism. The first incident was reported at 12:55 p.m. – before Israel’s military response – as Jewish congregants celebrated Simchat Torah. This timing is critical: it was the celebration of Hamas’s attack, not anger at Israel’s response, that prompted the surge.
Violence escalated – and skewed younger: Assaults jumped 96% to 266 in 2023, with over a third of victims being minors in 2024, according to CST. In Golders Green, Ionut-Christian Bold conducted a weeks-long vandalism campaign using human feces and urine against four synagogues, one Jewish school, and one children’s nursery. The May 2021 convoy case demonstrated systemic prosecution failures: despite video evidence of participants driving through Jewish neighborhoods shouting “Rape their daughters,” the Crown Prosecution Service dropped all charges.
Online hatred went viral: CST recorded incidents reaching 1,360, a 257% increase. The Antisemitism Policy Trust’s October 2024 briefing “Antisemitism Goes Viral” documented a 115-fold increase in antisemitic content on X between October 2023 and June 2024. The Woolf Institute’s 2024 policy brief estimated approximately 500,000 explicitly antisemitic tweets circulate annually in the UK – roughly two per Jewish person.
Campus battlegrounds: Institutional paralysis
One Jewish student at Essex captured the atmosphere: “I heard ‘I hope you get gassed,’ ‘I hope we can go back to the old times in the 1940s,’ Nazi salutes – and the school did nothing.”
Universities emerged as flashpoints, with CST and Union of Jewish Students data showing the 2023-2024 academic year recording incidents that quintupled year-on-year. Critically, 68% referenced Israel or the Middle East, demonstrating how foreign policy discourse was deployed to target Jewish students.
At Leeds, Rabbi Zecharia Deutsch received death threats, including threats to rape and kill his wife and murder his children. Graffiti stating “Israel harvests Palestinian organs” appeared across campus. At Bristol, students were pressured to declare if they were “Zionists” and forced to remove Stars of David. Exeter saw students surrounded by hundreds, accused of being "responsible for their families dying."
Why the paralysis? Competing institutional pressures create paralysis: donors threatening to withdraw funding, faculty fears of academic freedom violations, student unions wielding political power, and genuine uncertainty about where legitimate criticism ends and antisemitism begins. Over 16 UK student unions have endorsed BDS campaigns since 2015, creating environments where Jewish students who don’t denounce Israel face social ostracism.
The Intra-Communal Professorial Group's survey (April 2024, N=497 Jewish staff and students) found that only 22% felt comfortable being open about their identity after October 7. More telling: StandWithUs’s survey (April 2024, N=1,000+ non-Jewish students) revealed 64% were unwilling to call October 7 “terrorism,” 29% believed it was an “understandable act of resistance,” and 38% agreed that students supporting Israel should “expect” abuse.
Digital hatred: Regulatory vacuum
Platforms are under-enforced at scale. A Center to Counter Digital Hate study (2021) found 84% of antisemitic posts drew 7.3 million views without action. On X, CST links ownership changes to a year-on-year 79% rise; the Antisemitism Policy Trust tracked a 115-fold content surge post–October 7. TikTok logged an Auschwitz-themed track with over six million plays. The Online Safety Bill remains weakly implemented: too few culturally literate moderators, slow reporting loops, and recommendation systems that keep surfacing hate.
Facebook implemented a new policy in July 2024 banning the misuse of “Zionist” as hate speech cover, designating it “Tier 1 hate speech” when used to degrade Jews. Yet the same Center to Counter Digital Hate study found Facebook took no action on 89% of antisemitic posts – the worst performance among platforms studied.
Technology Secretary Michelle Donelan convened platform representatives in October 2023, but the result was limited and largely procedural, without substantive change to moderation practices or algorithmic design.
Political polarization: When partisanship enables hate
Government interventions have increased substantially – over £75 million in security funding from 2015-2023 through the Jewish Community Protective Security Grant, with an additional £7 million allocated in October 2024. Yet Campaign Against Antisemitism's June 2024 survey found that 84% of British Jews believe authorities aren't doing enough.
The disconnect reveals how political polarization itself has become part of the problem. Conservatives increased security funding while avoiding difficult regulatory battles with tech platforms and resisting campus speech restrictions – prioritizing site security over upstream prevention. Labour under Keir Starmer promises stronger enforcement, but the party’s recent history creates skepticism about whether it will confront hostile campus cultures or challenge social media companies effectively.
Security spending is broadly consensual; definitions, enforcement, and speech boundaries are where the coalition cracks. Neither approach addresses the fundamental issue: institutional cultures, online regulation, and campus activism boundaries remain contested along partisan lines.
Prime Minister Starmer’s September 2024 announcement of mandatory Holocaust education and a five-point plan represents the familiar pattern: bureaucratic process over cultural change, quality seals over accountability, policy letters in place of enforceable penalties for institutional failures.
Community impact: When home becomes hostile
In Barnet alone, CST logged 864 incidents in 2023 – roughly one for every eight Jewish residents. The human cost extends beyond statistics. Institute for Jewish Policy Research’s 2024 data shows 21% of the British public now affirm four or more antisemitic statements – doubled from 11% in 2021. The belief that “Israel treats Palestinians like Nazis treated Jews” increased from 33% to 45% in one year, with 60% of young people aged 18-24 believing this comparison.
Generational shifts are particularly alarming: among 18-24 year-olds, 34% believe Jews have “unhealthy control over world banking system” compared to 12% of those 75+. When today’s university students carry attitudes toward Jews that their grandparents rejected, the trajectory becomes clear.
Campaign Against Antisemitism’s surveys show nearly 50% of British Jews have considered leaving – approximately double the 2015 figure. Only 33% believe they have a long-term future in the UK. The visible markers of Jewish identity have become targets, with 74% feeling less safe and 63% less confident displaying their Jewishness in public.
One mother in Manchester described the calculation: “We discuss at dinner whether my son should wear his kippah to school or hide it in his bag. In 2025. In England.” When citizens of a democracy hide their identity to avoid violence, the social contract has failed.
Conclusion: Exodus or resilience?
From medieval blood libel and the 365-year expulsion through gradual emancipation and modern political controversies, English Jewish history reflects cycles of acceptance and rejection. But this crisis differs fundamentally: for the first time in the post-war era, British Jews are contemplating permanent departure in significant numbers. When half a community considers emigration, when only a third believe they have a long-term future, when parents hide their children's identity – these signal not temporary difficulty but fundamental societal failure.
The Manchester attack may be the inflection point – when many British Jews moved from “How do we fight this?” to “Should we stay at all?” Whether a ninth century of Jewish life in England endures now depends on institutions proving – through enforcement, not statements – that Jewish safety truly counts.
Elon Gilad is an Israeli author, journalist, and linguist. His work focuses on uncovering the historical roots of contemporary issues, particularly in current affairs, Jewish history, and the Hebrew language. Gilad is the author of "The Secret History of Judaism." His analytical pieces draw on his diverse background to provide unique insights into today's complex issues, explaining current situations through the lens of historical development.