In December 2024 the Health Secretary met the Board of Deputies, whose constitution commits it to "advance Israel's security, welfare and standing", and the Jewish Medical Association asked him for IHRA. Ten months later the NHS adopted it, and the review went to Lord Mann, whose office a charity runs on £420,000 of uncompeted government grants. We followed the money.
The government said the man who wrote its antisemitism review was independent, with no conflict of interest. He was being paid by a government agency. In 2005 he singled out Muslim schools as a challenge to "our coherence as a nation", and a charity whose one firm policy is opposing boycotts of Israel has named him on its council since at least 2016. We followed the money.
Sir David Bell's review used it to say a view held by 45% of British adults, that Israel treats Palestinians like the Nazis treated Jews, could be antisemitic. It was committed to the definition before it heard any evidence. A charity whose one firm policy is opposing boycotts of Israel lists Bell on its council. Four of 37 reports told readers what the definition says about Israel.
Antisemitism is real, and Jewish people in Britain are attacked for being Jewish. But the count meant to measure it also counts words about Israel, because CST, the charity that shares reports with the police, follows the IHRA definition that treats comparing Israel to the Nazis as antisemitic, and Met guidance obtained under Freedom of Information says the Arabic word for resistance should be investigated. The Home Office publishes no breakdown, so nobody can say how many of the 3,162 crimes were attacks on Jews. By Nima Akram.
Two stabbings, radically asymmetric coverage. Measured in a like-for-like first-72-hour window, the national press covered the Golders Green stabbing of two Jewish men several times more than the Edinburgh attacks that wounded five, several of them Muslim, and reached for 'terror' far more often (Edinburgh was reported as 'suspected', 'faith-based hate', or a 'knifeman'). And the newsroom gap mirrors a government gap: an emergency COBRA meeting, threat-level rise, PM visit and £25m for one, none of it for the other.
Prince Harry's New Statesman op-ed condemned antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred as twin manifestations of the same well of division. Within 24 hours, eight major Western outlets had reduced the balanced argument to a one-sided statement on antisemitism alone.
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