My son was abused daily by antisemitic classmates who turned on Bunsen burners and made hissing noises to echo the horrors of the gas chambers – this is the ‘rife’ hatred Jewish people face in Britain today

What started with another child drawing a swastika and then pointing it at the Jewish boy’s face and laughing at him quickly turned into a daily barrage of antisemitic abuse inflicted on the boy by his classmates.

For two years, the defenseless 14-year-old was repeatedly called ‘Yid’ and ‘Jewish scum’. In science classes, Josh was ridiculed by his peers, who turned on Bunsen burners, making hissing noises like the gas chambers of the Holocaust, and shouting “be careful, there’s a Jew in there.” Sometimes they gave Nazi salutes and shouted ‘Heil Hitler’.

A young student once shouted ‘Fuck the Jews, kill the Jews’ at the terrified teenager and followed him home.

But despite numerous complaints made by parents to the school in east London, its headteacher advised the boy to ‘be more resilient’.

One time, when he did this and told one of his racist bullies to ‘fuck you’, it was Josh who was disciplined and detained.

Kelly Kaye gets understandably emotional at various points as she retells the ‘hell’ her son went through at school.

‘As a parent, you feel like you’re doing everything right, but you feel like you can’t protect your child in situations like this. “This is really scary.”

Kelly’s story is one of several to emerge in which campaigners say Britain is now in the grip of a “crisis of antisemitism” and anti-Semitic sentiment is “widespread” across the country.

She and other victims shared their experiences at an ’emergency summit’ in the House of Commons on Wednesday, attended by MPs and colleagues, as well as antisemitism campaigners, presenter Rachel Riley and journalist Lord Daniel Finkelstein.

Kelly Kaye told the intense meeting: ‘As a parent, you feel like you’re doing everything right, but you still feel like you can’t protect your child in these situations. ‘It’s really scary’

Lawyers say MPs must take “urgent action” to finally address the root causes of such hatred, which they say was growing in the UK long before the Hamas terrorist attacks on Israel on October 7, 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza.

Their concerns are backed up by the latest figures from the Community Security Trust (CST), released just weeks ago, which show extremely dire consequences.

The findings revealed that Jews are now eight times more likely to be victims of religious hate crime than other groups.

The report also found that 3,700 anti-Semitic hate incidents will be recorded in 2025; This number represents a staggering 280 percent increase since 2015.

Perhaps most sobering, 2025 sees the first anti-Semitic terrorist attack on British soil. Jewish worshipers Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby were killed on October 2 when an Islamist terrorist wearing a fake suicide belt burst through the gates of Manchester’s Heaton Park Synagogue before slashing innocent civilians with a knife.

Jeremy Wootliff, of the Victims of Antisemitism and Grassroots Support (GPS) Network, which is behind today’s Stop Antisemitism Crisis campaign with Christians United For Israel, said: ‘These figures are extraordinary and antisemitism is on the rise.

‘In the last 5 to 10 years this rate has more than doubled. It causes disturbance and violence, terrorism – and it led to deaths.

‘This is not the Britain we know and love. Antisemitism is a crisis in this country and no one seems to realize it.

‘What needs to be made clear is that this is happening all over the world’ United Kingdom. It’s in the education system, in the healthcare system, and in workplaces all over the country.

‘Jews are excluded’ and this happens every day. There are only 270,000 of us in Britain and m‘They’re all leaving the country.’

Wootliff spoke of dozens of victims who had come forward to report hate incidents, claiming there was a ‘widespread and dangerous movement to demonize Jews’ driven by extremists ‘on all sides’.

A woman named Victoria, from Ilford, Essex, recalled how she was abused online and received direct threats to her family. Among the insults directed at her, Victoria was called a ‘genocidal, infanticide pedophile, ethnic cleansing Zionist pig’.

On the day of his son’s bar mitzvah, he was subjected to ‘racist abuse’ from people who came to the synagogue. He was also subjected to anti-Semitic abuse at school, with one boy telling him: ‘You should have been thrown into the ovens at Auschwitz like the rest of your family.’

Victoria believes the government needs to take more direct action.

‘The only solution offered so far by Labor and the Conservatives is to give more money to CST and the security of our schools and synagogues. But this does nothing about the root causes; It’s like putting a cast on an amputated limb. ‘We need to do something else.’

In another incident, waitress Zoe, from Hastings, said death threats were made to her face and she was called a ‘baby killer’ and a ‘terrorist’. He requested that his religion be removed from his medical records because he did not feel ‘unsafe’.

Ryan, a social media manager from Manchester, recalled a female Muslim colleague making death threats and telling him she was a Hamas supporter. He told her he was going to ’empty her bowels’ [him] like a fish’

In Glasgow, Edward was suspended from the school where he taught and arrested after two students colluding with a pro-Palestinian group made false allegations of sexual assault. ‘I have been called a ‘pedophile’ on the street many times since I proved my innocence.’

Asher, a student from Bangor, said he and other Jews in his community had been ‘physically attacked many times.’ He also claimed that the only Jewish-owned business he attended university at was ‘destroyed repeatedly’ but no charges were brought by the CPS. ‘Antisemitism is now institutionally normalized,’ Asher said.

NHS worker Helen said she was verbally abused by colleagues, with one of them insisting that ‘all Jews are racist’. He was also said to have been ‘investigated’ by his superiors for his ‘Zionist beliefs’. When she later said she felt racially targeted they ‘completely ignored me’. He later contacted the police because he did not feel safe.

In fact, there are so many examples that Wootliff recognizes and comes to the sickening conclusion: ‘Jewish people going about their daily lives in Britain can no longer function normally.’

He added: ‘He’s moving somewhere.’ Shops are closed, people are fired, false accusations are made,They are afraid of their children going to school.

‘This is not acceptable to others and it is not acceptable to Jews either.’

According to Kelly, the abuse her son, who is autistic, suffered during his GCSE years led her to believe it was not only relentless but ‘pervasive’.

‘It wasn’t just a bunch of kids doing this. When we looked at the prom photos, he pointed out all the kids who had ever acted antisemitic towards him at any time, and we actually counted 40 kids.

‘When he finally left after GCSE exams, I lodged a complaint with the governors and compiled all the emails of concern I had sent over those two years. It got to about 80 pages, which is truly terrible.

‘We ended up having to take our daughter out because someone had carved a swastika on the table, but it took three complaints before the table was removed.

‘Moving it before the October 7 attacks Absolutely the best thing that could happen, Because I can’t imagine the abuse he would have been subjected to if he had stayed there.’

His son, who is now 19 years old, is studying at university and is ‘successful’ in his classes.

‘Jews going about their daily lives in Britain can no longer function normally,’ said campaigner Jeremy Wootliff (standing, fifth from right), pictured with Rachel Riley and victims of antisemitism.

Kelly added: ‘What I find really worrying is that this is how young people should be. If we can’t teach our children not to abuse others in this way, something is wrong with the education system.’

Some advocates have gone so far as to compare antisemitic abuse in Britain in 2026 to the treatment of Jews living in Nazi Germany in the 1930s – but surely the UK isn’t that bad?

‘I guess what we’re trying to say is we’re going to get there. “It’s heading in that direction,” Wootliff warns.

‘It’s really important that ordinary British people wake up to this threat, because we are the canaries in the coal mine.

‘This isn’t just about Jews, it’s about everyone. ‘This is a crisis for the country.’