Britain has a Jewish problem.

Despite its reputation for tolerance, Britain has long nurtured antisemitism — from Shakespeare to the BBC, from street protests to state policy — and today it’s resurfacing with alarming intensity.

The British flag (photo: Aleks M/Unsplash)

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There is a myth, particularly among British elites, that antisemitism is something that happens elsewhere: on the Continent, perhaps, or across the Atlantic in the dark corners of American politics.

Britain, with its polished manners, royal pageantry, and parliamentary tradition, fancies itself above such ancient hatred. But this myth has always been just that: a myth.

Britain has a Jewish problem. And it is getting worse.

This is not a new phenomenon. British antisemitism is deeply rooted in history.

In the 12th century, Catholic medieval Britain was a persecutory society, particularly when it came to Jews. It pioneered the blood libel and the church was a leader in instituting cruel legislation and discriminatory conduct toward Jews. The Norwich case in 1144 marked the first time Jews were accused of using the blood of Christian children for their Passover matzah.

In 1290, England became the first European country to expel its Jews. For centuries, Jews were banned from living on British soil, not formally re-admitted until the mid-1600s under Oliver Cromwell. Even then, integration was slow and tolerance conditional.

In the 20th century, as Jews fled the horrors of Nazi Europe, Britain turned away many desperate refugees, including those aboard the St. Louis, forcing them back toward near-certain death.

Later, as Holocaust survivors sought refuge in British Mandatory Palestine, Britain imposed draconian immigration restrictions, limiting Jewish entry to the land that would become the State of Israel. British soldiers forcibly detained Holocaust survivors in internment camps in Cyprus, and in some cases even sent them back to Europe.

What’s more, English literature and culture are drenched in antisemitic stereotypes. Major British authors throughout the centuries transmitted culturally embedded antisemitism to future generations.

Charles Dickens’s “Oliver Twist” offered one of the most enduring antisemitic caricatures of the Victorian era with the character of Fagin, a scheming, hook-nosed villain whose Jewish identity is central to his menace.

And, in William Shakespeare’s “The Merchant of Venice,” the Jewish moneylender Shylock is portrayed as greedy, vengeful, and obsessed with extracting a “pound of flesh.” While some modern interpretations attempt to humanize him, the character was written and staged in a time when Jews were banned from England, and his portrayal reinforced centuries of anti-Jewish stereotypes. Shylock became the prototype of the villainous Jew in European literature, a caricature so deeply ingrained that it still reverberates in the collective imagination today.

But these weren’t isolated cases. In the early 20th century, celebrated writers such as John Galsworthy, H. G. Wells, and even the towering poet T. S. Eliot infused their works with subtle (and at times explicit) antisemitic undertones. Eliot, widely regarded as one of the most influential poets of the century, did not shy away from portraying Jews in stereotypical and often dehumanizing ways.

Around the turn of the 20th century, a popular narrative emerged in British intellectual circles: a conspiracy theory claiming that British imperial policy, particularly in South Africa, was being manipulated by powerful “Anglo-Hebraic” financiers. This theory, tinged with classic antisemitic tropes, suggested that Jewish bankers were pulling the strings behind Britain’s global ambitions, especially following the discovery of gold in the region.

What’s especially troubling is that this wasn’t fringe thinking; it was championed by respected journalists, authors, and even liberal economist John Hobson, whose writings influenced generations of critics of imperialism.

Decades later, similar themes reappeared, this time from Britain’s radical Left. Critics claimed that then-Prime Minister Tony Blair’s decision to support the Iraq War was not merely a strategic blunder, but the result of manipulation by a cabal of wealthy Jewish advisers in both Britain and the United States. Wrapped in anti-war rhetoric, this accusation revived age-old myths of Jewish control and dual loyalty, repackaged for a new political moment.

It’s also worth noting that, long before the Soviets turned “Zionism equals Nazism” into a staple of post-World War II propaganda, the idea had already gained disturbing traction among certain elite circles in Britain. While the USSR may have industrialized the smear, it didn’t invent it. In fact, several prominent Britons in the 1940s were already peddling this slanderous comparison, earning themselves early distinction in the now well-worn tradition of dressing up antisemitism as political critique.

This same legacy of cold detachment now finds new life in modern Britain, cloaked not in the language of race, but in the language of “justice,” “human rights,” and “anti-Zionism.” What was once whispered in pubs and drawing rooms is now shouted in protests, circulated in publishing houses, and codified by professional associations.

For starters, some of the most extreme, explicitly pro-Hamas demonstrations in the Western world have taken place on British streets since October 7th. Crowds numbering in the tens of thousands have marched through central London chanting “From the River to the Sea!”, waving Hamas flags, and calling for the destruction of Israel — a country still reeling from the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust.

People in Britain regularly tear down posters of kidnapped Israeli hostages, cheered for intifada, and proudly brandished images of terrorists as heroes. All under the watchful eye, and often tacit approval, of institutions that would never tolerate such behavior directed at any other minority.

“There is also no other Western society where jihadi radicalism has proved as violent and dangerous as in the UK,” wrote professor Robert S. Wistrich, from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.¹

The BBC, Britain’s publicly funded national broadcaster, has repeatedly shown itself to be flagrantly biased against Israel. Its coverage of the October 7th Hamas massacre was laced with euphemisms and false equivalencies, frequently failing to describe the terrorists as such and refusing for months to acknowledge the well-documented atrocities — mass rapes, child murders, and beheadings — committed by Hamas.

The media outlet routinely treats Israeli defensive actions as aggression, while presenting Hamas propaganda as unfiltered truth. No less, the BBC regularly airs misleading casualty figures from Gaza without context, amplifies false accusations about Israel, and frequently omits the fact that Hamas embeds its operatives and weapons in civilian areas.

Remember that documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone” commissioned by the BBC earlier this year? It had direct links to Hamas, including a boy named Zakaria, 11 years old, who was later found pictured wearing a jihadist headband and clutching an automatic weapon as he was embraced by a hooded terrorist. The main star of the program, Abdullah Al-Yazouri, 13 years old at the time, was revealed to be the son of a Hamas government minister, while the father of another child in the documentary served in the Hamas police and was imprisoned in Israel for terrorism offenses.

The narrator boy in this recently aired BBC documentary “Gaza: How to Survive a War Zone” is the son of a Hamas minister. (photo: screenshot/BBC)

While the BBC claims neutrality, its editorial decisions consistently reinforce the narrative that Israel is the sole aggressor and Palestinians the passive victims, even when faced with overwhelming evidence to the contrary. This isn’t journalism; it’s antisemitic laundering.

To add insult to injury, British Foreign Minister David Lammy announced this week that the UK may escalate measures not against Hamas, which started this war, but against Israel, if the Israelis do not agree to a ceasefire. One might expect a top diplomat to pressure both sides to end hostilities or, at the very least, to acknowledge the root cause of the war: Hamas’s brutal massacre on October 7, 2023. But Lammy, like many of his peers, doesn’t see nuance. He sees only Israel as the problem. Hamas, apparently, is a minor detail.

The message is clear: Jews who defend themselves against genocidal terrorists are uniquely worthy of condemnation.

That message has been reinforced through policy. In May, the UK suspended free trade talks with Israel. Just months earlier, in September 2024, the British government halted arms export licences to Israel — effectively punishing a democratic ally in the middle of a defensive war against a genocidal terror regime. These aren’t acts of mere neutrality; they’re steps toward political alignment with the very forces that openly seek the elimination of the Jewish state.

Of course, these gross double standards do not end at the political doorstep. They seep into culture, literature, and science. In a recent revelation, a literary agent claimed that half of British publishers “won’t take books by Jewish authors.”² Imagine the outcry if a prominent figure said half the publishing industry was closed to Black, Muslim, or gay writers. Yet, when it comes to Jews, this exclusion is met with silence — or worse, justification.

Even the British Medical Association has joined the chorus. A few weeks ago, it suspended ties with the Israeli Medical Association, citing the latter’s alleged failure to condemn Israel’s military actions in Gaza. Never mind that Israeli doctors — Jewish, Muslim, Christian, Druze — work around the clock to treat victims on all sides. Never mind that Israel’s hospitals have treated Gazan patients, including Hamas terrorists.

The British Medical Association made its decision not based on sound medicine, but on demented politics. And, more to the point, on which group of people they feel is acceptable to scapegoat.

Even more absurd is the willful blindness to the fact that Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad routinely use medical facilities in Gaza as shields for their terrorist infrastructure. It is a matter of public record — confirmed by American, Israeli, and even some European intelligence — that these groups store weapons beneath hospitals, launch rockets near schools, and use ambulances to transport terrorists. But rather than condemn this grotesque exploitation of the medical system, the British Medical Association chose to cut ties with the doctors whose country is trying to stop it.

This hostility does not occur in a vacuum. It’s part of a broader British cultural shift that increasingly treats Jewish identity as suspicious and Jewish suffering as inconvenient. British Jews are now expected to disavow Israel to be welcome in progressive circles, to apologize for the Jewish state’s right to exist, and to endure threats to their safety while their concerns are dismissed as overblown.

The irony, of course, is that the British pride themselves on fairness. But when it comes to Jews, fairness is suspended. Complexity is flattened. A 77-year-old democracy that emerged from the ashes of genocide and mass expulsion is held to impossible standards, while genocidal terror groups are rationalized and even romanticized.

Britain’s problem isn’t just with Israel. It’s with Jews. Because this is what antisemitism looks like in 2025 — not goose-stepping Nazis, but polite press releases, literary blacklists, and medical associations that weaponize morality to isolate the Jewish state and the people connected to it.

Until Britain reckons with its own discomfort, suspicion, and disdain toward Jews, whether cloaked in politics or culture, it will remain mired in a familiar hypocrisy: preaching tolerance, while practicing something very different.

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1. “Antisemitism Embedded in British Culture.” Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.

2. “Half of British publishers ‘won’t take books by Jewish authors’.” The Telegraph.