The United Kingdom is a hotbed of antisemitism at a time when the country has so little sway in the Middle East. Why? Blame it on a peculiar leftover of imperial grandeur

The front pages of Britain's newspapers carried banner headlines Thursday reporting a record year in antisemitic incidents in the United Kingdom.

According to data compiled by the Community Security Trust, there were 4,103 incidents in 2023 – the highest by far since it began monitoring antisemitism nationwide 40 years ago.

Unlike some organizations we won't mention here that claim to monitor and fight antisemitism, the Community Security Trust isn't known for its alarmism. It is the gold standard in its field, providing a reliable barometer of Jew-hatred in Britain. When the trust says this was the worst year in most British Jews' lifetimes, it's not exaggerating.

The figures are shocking, but they don't come as too much of a surprise. Nearly 2,700 incidents – over two-thirds – occurred in less than three months, in the period immediately following the Hamas attack on Oct. 7 and subsequent war in Gaza.

Britain is hardly unique. The biggest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust spawned a global wave of copycat attacks on Jews wherever they live.

The various ways in which data is collected in different countries makes it difficult to make accurate comparisons. Even so, it's hard to avoid the feeling that there is something particularly pervasive about the way British Jews have been targeted, and how it has played out not only in verbal and physical attacks on Jewish individuals and institutions but in the media and national politics.

There have been reports of antisemitic incidents in each of Britain's 45 policing regions. Furthermore, while many of the participants in the largest and most frequent marches against Israel may not have been self-consciously antisemitic, they certainly had no problem marching alongside those chanting anti-Jewish slogans.

This isn't about Israel or Gaza. It isn't even about the Jews. Other countries have had large and angry anti-Israel protests in the wake of Oct. 7 that have quickly spilled over into attacks on the local Jewish communities. But not on this scale.

This is about Britain and what has become a particularly perverse British obsession.

Why has Britain become such a hub of hate? Historically, Britain had its fair share of medieval pogroms and blood libels, leading up to the Edict of Expulsion of the Jews in 1290, which was repealed only in 1656. But it would be hard to argue that those 366 years in which Jews were banned, though rarely acknowledged, is a key factor for today's Judeophobia – especially as in the centuries that followed the Jews' return, Britain would become one of the world leaders in granting them equal rights.

Britain has been a relatively benign environment for Jews in recent centuries, with the rare exception of 1947's Cheetham Hill pogrom in Manchester. That was so rare that it has been all but forgotten, because Britain has not been a nation prone to the extreme politics and authoritarianism that have usually been the precursors to the victimization of Jews. So what has changed?

Some put the blame on a growing Muslim minority. Yet while that is a factor, it is also not a unique one in most Western countries. In the rest of Western Europe, most Muslims are Arabs who arrived originally from northern Africa – much closer in geography and ethnicity to the Palestinians. The majority of British Muslims come from Pakistan, India and Bangladesh, and are not Arab.

It is something in Britain that has made them much more passionate about Palestinians and angry toward their Jewish neighbors.

In the United States, U.S. President Joe Biden has come under pressure from the left wing of his party to take a tougher stance on Israel. The same is true of leaders in other countries. But they are the ones who can ostensibly apply pressure on Israel. Only in Britain is it the leader of the opposition, Labour's Keir Starmer – who currently has no influence whatsoever over his country's foreign policy – who is facing increasing pressure within his party to criticize Israel. In fact, he has been having a much tougher time on this than the prime minister, Rishi Sunak.

Starmer's predicament is a useful insight on the British situation. He became Labour leader after the party suffered its worst electoral defeat in 90 years under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn – an ardent pro-Palestine campaigner who famously insisted that he did not have an antisemitic bone in his body, yet somehow never met a Jew-baiter he didn't like.

Starmer has gone to great lengths to detoxify Labour since becoming leader in 2020, including withdrawing the party whip from Corbyn when he refused to apologize after the Equality and Human Rights Commission issued a report finding "serious failings in the Labour Party leadership in addressing antisemitism."

Labour is currently leading the Conservatives by a wide margin, and Starmer's refusal to demand a cease-fire in Gaza hasn't seemingly caused him any political damage. On the contrary. For most of this period, he has risen in the polls and is on track to become Britain's next prime minister.

This would indicate that the massive hate-infused marches, the blanket coverage of Gaza in the British media and the surge in antisemitic incidents ultimately reflects the obsession of only a minority in Britain. That is encouraging, but it still doesn't explain the surge – especially as we haven't seen anything similar in Western countries with much larger and more traditionally antisemitic radical parties.

There is another mystery about this anti-Jewish moment. By nearly all geopolitical parameters, Britain is at best a third-rate power these days. It no longer enjoys a "special relationship" with the United States, and through the self-harm of Brexit has drastically weakened its global standing by no longer being an influential member of the European Union. It no longer has any power over Arab countries, while its arms sales to Israel are negligible. In fact, the weapons and military training systems Britain buys from Israel far exceed anything going in the opposition direction.

The British government has no hard or soft power it can leverage over Israel. Its diplomats have been playing a very peripheral role in the negotiations over humanitarian aid to Gaza and none whatsoever in trying to reach a hostage deal or cease-fire agreement.

What Britain lacks in any actual sway in the Middle East, it more than makes up for in an inflated sense of its self-importance, nourished by the myth that the Balfour Declaration and Britain's brief mandate in Palestine somehow played a major part in the foundation of Israel.

It is a peculiar leftover of imperial grandeur because it afflicts the left rather than the right, which is usually more prone to such illusions. But that is the likeliest explanation for this exaggerated belief in Britain's influence on the conflict, the misplaced passions it arouses and the frustration when Britain can do nothing results in this nasty obsession and animosity toward British Jews.