Community Security Trust offers a new year’s message to the Leeds Jewish community and welcomes its support.
This Rosh Hashanah, we will hope and pray for a better year ahead, one in which the Jewish community in Leeds is able to lead Jewish life to the full. The volunteers and staff of Community Security Trust (CST) will do everything that we can to help ensure that antisemitism does not interfere with all our Jewish lives. We do this all year, every year. We do it with your help and cooperation. We thank you. This May, when Israel was at war, many British Jews saw the sad extent to which antisemitism is still a problem. This Jew-hatred changes over time, but it never disappears. It did not end with the Holocaust, nor with the creation of Israel: and this is why CST still does its work, in close partnership with shuls, schools and Jewish organisations throughout the United Kingdom. The antisemitism came in many forms. Schoolchildren and university students felt it from those they had thought were their friends. Cars bearing Palestinian flags were aggressively driven through Jewish neighbourhoods across the UK, where in some cases antisemitic abuse was shouted and Jewish people were targeted in the street.
Demonstrations have included Jihadi battle cries against Jews. In the UK in the first six months of this year, there has been an almost 50% increase in antisemitic incidents compared to this time last year.
In recent months, CST has given numerous reports to the police that have led to arrests and prosecutions for antisemitic behaviour. This was partly due to information reported to us from Jewish members of the public, as well as our own specialist research work. This is the side of CST’s protection that goes largely unseen, whereas our physical security is much more obvious. Both sides of CST’s work depend upon you playing your part: the security and the research.
So please, keep reporting antisemitism to CST and keep supporting us in our security work. We will continue to always work in partnership with our communities. May all of you and your families and friends have a sweet new year.