What began with another child drawing a swastika before shoving it into the Jewish boy’s face and laughing at him, soon became a daily barrage of antisemitic abuse inflicted on the youngster by his classmates.
Over two years, the vulnerable 14-year-old was incessantly called a ‘Yid’ and ‘Jewish scum’. Josh was derided in science lessons by his peers, who would turn on their Bunsen burners, make hissing noises like the gas chambers of the Holocaust and shout, ‘be careful, there’s a Jew over there’. Sometimes they would also make Nazi salutes and shout ‘Heil Hitler’.
On one occasion a younger pupil shouted ‘f*** the Jews, kill the Jews’ at the terrified teenager and followed him all the way home.
But despite multiple complaints made by his parents to the school in east London, the boy was advised by his headmaster to ‘be more resilient’.
The one time he did just that, telling one of his racist bullies to ‘f** off’, it was Josh who was disciplined and given a detention.
At various points between retelling of the ‘hell’ her son went through at school, Kelly Kaye becomes understandably emotional.
‘As a parent, you feel that you’ve done everything right, but yet in situations like these you feel you can’t protect your child. It’s really frightening.’
Kelly’s story is one of several emerging as campaigners say Britain is now in the grip of an ‘antisemitism crisis’, with anti-Jewish sentiment now ‘rife’ across the country.
She and other victims shared their experiences at an ’emergency summit’ held on Wednesday at the House of Commons, which was attended by MPs and peers, alongside antisemitism advocates, presenter Rachel Riley and journalist Lord Daniel Finkelstein.
Victims retold their experiences at a summit on Wednesday at the House of Commons and urged lawmakers to stop the ‘antisemitism crisis’ in Britain
Kelly Kaye told the packed meeting: ‘As a parent, you feel that you’ve done everything right, but yet in situations like these you feel you can’t protect your child. It’s really frightening’
Advocates say lawmakers need to take ‘urgent action’ that will finally address the root causes of such hatred, which they say was growing in the UK well before the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel of October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza.
Their concern is backed by the latest figures from Community Security Trust (CST), released just weeks ago, which make for the grimmest of readings.
Jews are now eight times more likely to be victims of religious hate crime than any other group, the findings revealed.
The report also found there were 3,700 anti-Jewish hate incidents recorded in 2025 – amounting to a staggering 280 per cent rise since 2015.
Perhaps most sobering of all, 2025 saw the first antisemitic terror attack on British soil. Jewish worshippers Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby were killed when an Islamist terrorist, wearing a fake suicide belt, drove through the gates of Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester on October 2, before slashing at innocent civilians with a knife.
Jeremy Wootliff, from Victims of Antisemitism and Grassroot Peoples’ Support (GPS) Network, which alongside Christians United For Israel is behind today’s launch of the Stop The Antisemitism Crisis campaign, said: ‘These figures are exceptional, and antisemitism is increasing.
‘Over the last five to 10 years, it has more than doubled. It is causing discomfort and violence, it has led to terrorism – and it has led to deaths.
‘This is not the Britain that we know and love. Antisemitism is a crisis in this country – and no-one seems to realise it.
‘What needs to be made clear is this is happening across the United Kingdom. It’s in the educational system, the health system, and in workplaces up and down the country.
‘Jews are being ostracised and it’s happening every single day. We’re only 270,000 people in Britain and many are leaving the country.’
Referring to what he claims is a ‘pervasive and dangerous movement to demonise Jews’ that has been driven by extremists ‘from all sides’, Wootliff spoke of the dozens of victims who have come forward to report hate incidents.
One woman, Victoria, from Ilford, Essex, recalled how she has been abused online and received direct threats to her family. Among the slights directed at her, Victoria has been called a ‘genocidal, baby killing paedophile, ethnic cleansing Zionist pig.’
On the day of her son’s bar mitzvah, he was subjected to people ‘hurling racial abuse’ as they turned up to synagogue. At school he further faced antisemitic abuse, with one child telling him: ‘You should have been put in the ovens like the rest of your family in Auschwitz’.
Victoria believes the government needs to take more direct action.
‘The only solution offered so far by Labour and the Tories is to give more money to CST and for security in our schools and synagogues. But that doesn’t do anything about the root causes – it’s like putting a plaster on an amputated limb. We need to be doing something else.’
In another instance, Zoe, a waitress from Hastings, said she had death threats made to her face and was called a ‘baby killer’ and ‘terrorist’. She has requested her religion be removed from her medical records because she does not feel ‘safe’.
Ryan, a social media manager from Manchester, recalled how a female Muslim colleague made death threats and told him she was a Hamas supporter. She told him that she was ‘going to gut [him] like a fish’.
In Glasgow, Edward was suspended from the school where he taught and arrested after two pupils, in collusion with a pro-Palestinian group, made false allegations of sexual assault. Despite since proving his innocence, ‘I have been repeatedly called a “paedophile” in the street.’
Asher, a student from Bangor, said that he and other Jewish people in his community have been ‘physically assaulted multiple times’. He also claimed the only Jewish-owned business where he attends university has been ‘vandalised repeatedly’, but no charges have ever been brought by the CPS. Asher said: ‘Antisemitism has now become normalised institutionally’.
An emergency dispatch worker told how she had been verbally abused by her colleagues, with one insisting that ‘all Jews were racist’. She was also told by her superiors that she was being ‘investigated’ for her ‘Zionist beliefs’. When she then said that she felt she was being racially targeted ‘they completed ignored me’. She subsequently went to the police because she did not feel safe.
In fact there are so many instances that Wootliff has become aware of that he has now sickeningly concluded: ‘Jewish people going around their daily lives in Britain can no longer operate normally’.
He added: ‘It is moving to a scary situation where shops are closing, where people are being thrown out of their jobs, where false accusations are being made, where mothers are frightened for their children going to school.
‘This would not be acceptable for any other people, and it’s not acceptable for Jews.’
For Kelly, the abuse her son – who is autistic – endured throughout his GCSE years led her to believe that not only was it unrelenting, but it was also ‘pervasive’.
‘This wasn’t just a handful of children doing this. When we looked at his prom pictures, he pointed out all the kids that had been antisemitic to him at any point, and we actually counted 40 individual children.
‘When he finally left after his GCSEs, I sent a complaint to the governors and collated all the emails of concern I had sent over those two years. It came to around 80 pages, which is just horrific.
‘We ended up taking our daughter out as well, because someone etched a swastika into the table, but it took three complaints before the desk was removed.
‘Moving her before the 7 October attacks was the absolutely best thing that could have happened, because I just cannot imagine the sort of abuse she would have got if she had stayed there.’
Her son, now 19, is studying at college and ‘flourishing’ in his studies.
Campaigner Jeremy Wootliff (standing fifth from right), pictured with Rachel RIley and victims of antisemitism, said ‘Jewish people going around their daily lives in Britain can no longer operate normally’
Kelly added: ‘What I find really concerning is that young people should be like this. Something has gone wrong in the education system if we can’t seem to teach our children that we shouldn’t abuse others like this.’
Some advocates have gone as far as to compare the antisemitic abuse experienced in Britain in 2026 as akin to the treatment of Jews living in Nazi Germany in the 1930s – but surely the UK has not become that bad?
‘I think what we’re trying to say is we’re going there. It’s going in that direction,’ warns Wootliff.
‘It’s really important that regular British people wake up to this threat, because we are the canaries in the coal mine.
‘This is not just about Jews, its about everybody. This is a crisis for the country.’
