The number of anti-Semitic attacks in the UK in 2014 is set to be the highest recorded in the past three decades, figures for the year suggest.
The record number of incidents includes everything from violent assaults to verbal abuse, hate-mail and attacks on social media. The exact figures will not be released until February 2015 but the number is likely to exceed 1,000.
Previously the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded in Britain in a single year in the recent past was 931 in 2009.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that monitors anti-Semitism in Britain, expects the total for 2014 to be the highest since it started collating the figures in 1984.
The CST recorded 302 anti-Semitic incidents in July 2014, a rise of more than 400% from the 59 incidents recorded in July 2013.
Jewish organisations said any such incidents were unacceptable and could not just be attributed to events in the Middle East.
Vivian Wineman, president of the Board of Deputies of British Jews, said: "The sharp increase in anti-Semitic incidents over the summer may have been occasioned by events in Gaza but much of the behaviour was pure anti-Semitism and had nothing to do with the Middle East.
“Such behaviour is totally unacceptable. We live in a tolerant society with a government and all political parties committed to fighting prejudice and anti-Semitism, but we cannot afford to be complacent.
“As Lord Sacks [the former Chief Rabbi] says, ‘anti-Semitism is a light sleeper’."
