Record Antisemitism and Homelessness Crisis: Why Britain Marches for Gaza While Its Own House Falls Down.
With 1,521 antisemitic incidents in six months and vulnerable communities under siege, thousands protest foreign conflicts while British streets fracture.
(Image: BBC)
It’s been a couple of days now since I vented my sheer astonishment regarding the homeless and mental health situation – both historically and as it stands today – along with my suggestions for how to fix it. Because, in my belief and hard-won experience, it isn’t rocket science. But then again, what do I know, other than what I’ve experienced, albeit some time ago?
Yet today I find myself in the crossfire of colliding thoughts, partly to do with the student protests taking place in and around various university campuses, my homelessness article, the recent Manchester synagogue attack, and how divided – perhaps even ghettoised, if there is such a term – people have become.
The House With Crumbling Foundations.
Here’s an imperfect analogy, but bear with me. Let’s just say that my house has such severe structural defects it is literally on its last foundations before falling down completely, quite possibly with me buried underneath it all. But instead of fixing my own problem at home, I’m out down the street helping a neighbour stop his own house from doing the same. Would this make any sense to you at all?
So, referring back to my article, why the hell aren’t people so keen to march and demonstrate to fix this country’s own problems first? And I only refer back to my article as it’s a convenient starting point against a great many others. Okay, I get it – there isn’t a war over here like the Middle East. Just a war of words, shouted and emblazoned on banners and placards, before anyone pulls me up on that point. But nonetheless, there is this huge disconnect.
Misplaced Priorities: Protesting Abroad While Britain Burns.
Look, I’ve nothing against people – even if I believe they’re hugely delusional and wearing adult nappies – having their protests. But if you’re so serious in intent, have the guts to jump on a plane and take your protest to where it actually matters. I mean, what’s the worst that can happen? Find yourself deported like Thunberg? Or is it that she’d get far too much world attention if anything other than being sent home happened?
You see, behind it all, I kind of get why people are so keen to fly the Union Flag, or Jack, as much as the Welsh fly the Red Dragon, and the Scots their Saltire. And yet somehow combining them as one ‘united’ flag becomes such a tissue-reaching issue? Some now dare to call it ‘racist.’ Another word that’s become so diluted and so far removed from what ‘race,’ ‘racist,’ and ‘racism’ actually mean, they’re thrown around like confetti at a wedding.
Yet, today of all days, when even Starmer says it isn’t appropriate to hold demonstrations, and even more so being in the aftermath of the Manchester synagogue murders, any reasonable-minded person would abandon any thought of demonstrating.
If Hamas hadn’t launched their raid on a peaceful Israeli music festival in the first place, there would be no need for any of this. Yes, I agree that there have been decades of prior context, occupation, and cycles of violence going back generations. But let’s, for once, at least, focus on the here and now of the current escalation. A needless one, I might add, about who can shout the loudest, it would seem. If Hamas had simply let the hostages go long before now, then surely most of this would have been defused.
British Jews Living in Fear: Record Antisemitic Incidents.
Considering religion and ethnic group responses, 300,000 people identified as Jewish on Census 2021. This is 0.5% of the England and Wales population. This includes 219,160 who identified through the religion question alone (76.3% of all people who identified as Jewish), according to the Office for National Statistics. I think it fair to say that figure will be higher now. However, we have to seriously question why it is that such a relatively small percentage of the total population is now living in such fear that many are considering exiling themselves and their families.
What kind of country are we living in where it’s reported Britain’s Community Security Trust, a nonprofit that says it protects British Jews from terrorism and antisemitism, recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents across the UK in the first half of 2025 – the second-highest total ever reported in the first six months of any year? What kind of country do we live in where no other faith group, as far as I know, has to have this level of protection in its places of worship, in its schools, in its community buildings? The Jewish community does. We’re talking fences, we’re talking spikes on rails, we’re talking barbed wire, we’re talking CCTV, we’re talking about them all being plugged into local police forces. Their synagogues, schools, and nurseries are already like fortresses.
Community leaders said security guards, stab vests, and CCTV were already an everyday part of life for worshippers, even before the attacks in Manchester. The day-to-day acceptance of antisemitism has permeated our whole society. Today in Britain, many Jewish schoolchildren feel compelled to hide their school uniforms. In primary schools, they practise bomb drills: small children hiding beneath their desks in fear of an attack. Synagogues have had to be protected by brave volunteers prepared to risk their lives.
Hatred towards Jewish people has risen since Hamas’s attack on Israel in 2023.
Collective Punishment: What Have British Jews Done?
Can anyone honestly point out what is so wrong about British Jews? People who get on with their lives, peacefully and quietly, minding their own business. People who, just like most others, go to work, raise families, and are devout to their faith, causing absolutely no harm to anyone. And yet they can be freely attacked for this while the real issues are thousands of miles away and have little if anything to do with them – except that they share the same faith.
They’re not making foreign policy. They’re not combatants. They’re teachers, shopkeepers, parents, citizens. They’re living their lives, practising their faith, contributing to society. And yet they’re the ones paying the price for conflicts they didn’t start and can’t control. Children hiding under desks. Nurseries are fortified like military installations. Volunteers risk their lives just to guard a place of worship.
What have they done to deserve this?
It’s collective punishment dressed up as activism. It’s hatred finding a convenient excuse. And while we’re busy directing our rage at innocent people on British streets, we can’t fix homelessness, we can’t protect our most vulnerable, we can’t even maintain the basic foundations of a decent society.
The house isn’t just falling down. We’re actively knocking out the support beams.
The Forgotten Muslim Majority.
And the same must be said for the vast majority of Muslims in this country. People who get on with their lives, peacefully and quietly, minding their own business. People who, just like everyone else, go to work, raise families, and are devout to their faith, causing absolutely no harm to anyone. They are not terrorists. They are not extremists. They did not plan October 7th, nor do they support it.
They’re shopkeepers, NHS workers, teachers, neighbours. They’re as British as anyone else, practising their faith, contributing to society, raising their children to be decent human beings. And yet they too face suspicion, hostility, and blame for actions carried out by extremists thousands of miles away who share nothing with them but a faith tradition twisted beyond recognition.
What have they done to deserve being collectively tarred with the brush of Hamas’s atrocities?
The truth is this: the overwhelming majority of both Jewish and Muslim communities in Britain want the same things – safety, peace, the chance to live without fear, to raise their families, to practise their faith freely. Neither community is responsible for the actions of foreign governments or terrorist organisations. Neither deserves to be treated as if they are.
And yet we watch both communities suffer while people march, shout, and wave banners – achieving precisely nothing except deeper division on British streets.
Britain’s House Is Falling Down.
So we return to where we began: the house with the crumbling foundations. We can’t house our homeless. We can’t treat our mentally ill. We can’t protect Jewish children from needing bomb drills or Muslim families from collective suspicion. We can’t even fly our own flag without being accused of racism – a word now so diluted, thrown around like confetti at a wedding, that it’s lost all meaning. We shout “jingoism” at anyone who dares suggest we might fix our own country first, as if wanting to repair your own collapsing house before helping the neighbour is somehow shameful. Meanwhile, our most vulnerable – of every faith and none – are left to fend for themselves in the rubble.
But we can march in our thousands about conflicts we can’t solve, for causes we barely understand, while our own streets fracture beneath our feet. The house is falling down, and we’re all still standing in the street, shouting at the neighbour’s problems, steadfastly refusing to look at our own collapsing walls. Perhaps when the rubble finally buries us, someone will wonder why we spent so much time protesting everyone else’s fires while our own home burned slowly and systematically to the ground while our eyes were focused elsewhere.
References and Related Coverage.
UK Census Data - Jewish Population Statistics: Office for National Statistics - Religion, England and Wales: Census 2021
Community Security Trust Antisemitism Data: CST Antisemitic Incidents Report 2025 (First Half)
Manchester Synagogue Attack Coverage: BBC News - Manchester synagogue incident reports The Guardian - Jewish community security concerns
October 7th Attack and Aftermath: BBC News - Israel-Gaza conflict timeline
UK Student Protests Coverage: The Times - University campus protests
UK Homelessness Crisis: Shelter UK - Homelessness statistics and reports Crisis UK - Homelessness data
Mental Health Services in the UK: Mind UK - Mental health statistics NHS England - Mental health services data
(search: UK university protests Gaza)
UK Homelessness Crisis: Shelter UK - Homelessness statistics and reports https://www.shelter.org.uk/what-we-do/we-campaign-for-change/homelessness-knowledge-hub
Crisis UK - Homelessness data https://www.crisis.org.uk/about-us/latest-research-and-reports/
Mental Health Services in the UK: Mind UK - Mental health statistics https://www.mind.org.uk/information-support/types-of-mental-health-problems/statistics-and-facts-about-mental-health/
NHS England - Mental health services data https://www.england.nhs.uk/mental-health/