More than a question of numbers – the CST and antisemitism

JVL Introduction

In an excellent analysis published in the Spring issue of Jewish Socialist, researcher Joseph Finlay looks at the reality of antisemitism in Britain today and the best ways to combat it.

His starting point is the Feb 2024 Community Security Trust (CST) annual report on antisemitic incidents for the previous year whose headline figures were reported on the Daily Mail’s front page  as “The Explosion in Hatred Against Jews in Britain”.

Not even the CST made that exaggerated claim but its supposedly neutral figures hide a variety of highly questionable interpretations as Finlay shows clearly.

He questions very strongly the conflation of its various categories of antisemitism to give a headline figure of which only 19% are relatively uncontentious. Around four-fifths of them  fall into the amorphous Antisemitic Abuse category where the risk of interpretative politicisation, especially post-October 7, is high, and here Finlay raises important objections, doubts and clarifications.

He also raises important wider questions. Does the dissemination of these statistics actually help make people less antisemitic?

Is it wise to have separate bodies to record racist incidents against one particular group only? Or “wouldn’t it be better to have to have broad-based antiracism organisations, to try and record racist hate crime in general, and to offer community-based approaches to combatting it?”

Much food for thought and clear evidence that the current approach feeds moral panics about antisemitism rather than making Jews safer.

RK

This article was originally published by Jewish Socialist on Tue 26 Mar 2024. Read the original here.