KI Price/Getty ImagesReports of antisemitic hate incidents in the UK spiked a day after punk duo Bob Vylan’s controversial Glastonbury performance, according to figures from a Jewish security charity.
Jewish communities are facing “extreme levels of Jew-hatred”, the Community Security Trust (CST) said.
The organisation, which monitors antisemitism in the UK, said a total of 1,521 antisemitic incidents were reported in the first half of 2025.
It was the second-highest number of its kind reported to CST, but down by a quarter from a record high in the first half of last year.
Responding to the findings, Home Secretary Yvette Cooper said antisemitic incidents and crimes “remain shamefully and persistently high”.
There were at least 200 incidents every month in the first half of 2025, the CST said. The report relies on figures from incidents that are self-reported.
An average of 8.4 incidents per day were reported in the first six months of the year. The highest daily total of 26 came on 29 June, the day after the performance by Bob Vylan at the Glastonbury festival.
During the set, which was livestreamed on the BBC iPlayer, the punk duo led a chant of “death, death to the IDF [Israel Defence Forces]” and made other derogatory comments.
It prompted apologies from the BBC and Glastonbury and triggered an ongoing police investigation.
The CST said the incidents reported to the charity involved anti-Jewish responses to events at Glastonbury as well as to the CST’s subsequent statement on social media, which branded the chants “utterly chilling”.
During the set, singer Pascal Robinson-Foster, who performs under the stage name Bobby Vylan, also made a speech about a record label boss he used to work for.
That boss would “speak very strongly about his support for Israel”, and had put his name to a letter urging Glastonbury to cancel Irish-language rap trio Kneecap’s performance, the musician said.
The singer said: “Who do I see on that list of names but that bald-headed [expletive] I used to work for? We’ve done it all, all right – from working in bars to working for [expletive] Zionists.”
After the media coverage of their set, Bob Vylan said in a statement: “We are not for the death of Jews, Arabs or any other race or group of people. We are for the dismantling of a violent military machine.”
The second-worst day for what the CST described as “anti-Jewish hate” was 17 May, with 19 incidents, a day after Israel announced an expansion of its military operation in Gaza.
The CST said: “Both of these cases illustrate how sentiment and rhetoric towards Israel and Zionism influence, shape and drive contemporary anti-Jewish discourse, online and offline, often around totemic events that grab mainstream public attention.”
Just over half (51%) of all incidents in the first half of this year “referenced or were linked to Israel, Palestine, the Hamas terror attack (of 7 October 2023) or the subsequent outbreak of conflict”, the CST said.
Israel launched its military offensive in Gaza in response to Hamas’s attack on southern Israel on 7 October 2023, in which about 1,200 people were killed and 251 others taken to Gaza as hostages.
More than 60,000 Palestinians have been killed as a result of Israel’s military campaign, according to the territory’s health ministry.
