Amanda has been at the centre of her local community for years, as a volunteer and a governor at her two children's school in a quiet London suburb. But over the past two years, she says simply going about her daily life has brought her abuse. She has been spat at in the street, branded a "baby killer", and received a death threat, she says, all because she is Jewish.
Until recently, Amanda, 47, always openly wore a Star of David pendant around her neck. The Jewish symbol is a proud part of her identity and she had never thought twice about displaying it. Now, she tells BBC Panorama, she is afraid it marks her out as a target.
"It's hard to be openly Jewish sometimes in everyday life," she says. "Living in the UK now for Jewish people is very uncomfortable."
In a WhatsApp group of about 20 of her Jewish friends – many of them children or grandchildren of refugees from the Nazis, who once saw the UK as a haven from antisemitism – she says conversations have shifted from neighbourhood chat to more existential questions.
"There aren't any Jewish people I know that haven't got plans to leave," says Amanda. "The first thing we all talk about is: What is the exit plan? Where are you going? What will you do? When will you be going? Or they're already moved or moving."
Amanda describes herself as Modern Orthodox – a section of Judaism that seeks to uphold Jewish traditions and laws, but with active engagement in the modern world.
While her WhatsApp group is not a representative sample of all Jews in the UK, Amanda says people in it are considering emigrating within the next few months, along with their families – mainly to Israel.
They are not alone. More British Jews have moved to Israel in the past 12 months than in any other year since the turn of this century, Israeli government migration statistics show.
There are peaks and troughs, and although the overall numbers moving to Israel are relatively small – 742 out of an estimated 300,000 population – that is double the number in 2023, the year of the Hamas-led attacks on 7 October and the Israeli military action in Gaza that followed.
And a recent survey by the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR), shared exclusively with BBC Panorama, suggests antisemitism is pushing about one in five British Jews to think about leaving.
Amanda says growing fears about safety make life in the UK feel increasingly unsustainable for Jewish people.
When she tried to organise an event last year to celebrate the festival of Hanukkah for her community, Amanda says the venue she had booked cancelled at the last minute, citing security concerns following the deadly mass shooting at a Hanukkah party on Bondi Beach in Sydney.
Excluding Jews "doesn't make us any safer", she says. "It just removes us from life."
Amanda is one of more than a dozen Jewish people from a range of UK communities who have spoken to Panorama – including an NHS midwife, a student and a musician who was kidnapped.
They describe a rising undercurrent of antisemitism across society. Police and policy experts tasked with tackling antisemitism believe this has helped create the conditions for the most serious anti-Jewish hate crimes in recent British history, including the Manchester synagogue attack that left two men dead.
In north London, recent targeting of Jewish premises has also heightened fears – including an arson attack last month on ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity in Golders Green and attempted arson last week on a synagogue in Finchley Over the weekend, there were arson attempts on a business in Hendon and a synagogue in Kenton.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a charity that provides advice and security for Jewish communities and monitors antisemitism in the UK, says it is receiving record numbers of reports of antisemitism.
Last year, it received 3,700 reports of incidents of malicious acts aimed at Jewish people or organisations, it says, more than 10 a day – making the annual total second only to 2023, when there were almost 4,300.
Across England and Wales, police recorded 10,065 religiously motivated hate crimes for the year ending March 2025, according to the latest Home Office figures.
The Muslim community was the most targeted group with 4,478 cases – including a spike in Islamophobic hate crimes following the Southport knife attack.
However Jewish people, with a much smaller population, experienced more than eight times as many hate-crime incidents per head of population as Muslims.
Laura, 62, a midwife in London, says she feels unsafe going to work.
She has spent years campaigning for more culturally sensitive maternity care for Jewish mothers, including educating NHS staff on antisemitism. But following a number of incidents where doctors have been suspended and struck off over antisemitic remarks, she is worried some wards have become less safe for Jewish staff.
"I think it's very hard to be openly Jewish in the NHS without feeling a degree of fear and that you may not be psychologically safe with some of your colleagues," she says.
Laura posts about her work on social media and says she has also experienced personal abuse online – directed towards her and other Jewish midwives.
"I've been called racist. I've had various sort of slurs. I've been called a Zio."
Zio is a pejorative abbreviation for Zionist.
"There are also Nazi-type tropes – that kind of inversion is incredibly distressing.
"All I've been trying to do is explain what the Jewish experience is, living through these very tumultuous times."
There is also concern about antisemitism on university campuses. One in five students of all backgrounds said they would not be open to house-sharing with a Jewish person, according to a recent survey of 1,000 students for the Union of Jewish Students.
Avital, 21, who studies at a university in the north of England, says some of her friends have had to leave their accommodation because of comments made by flatmates.
"It's creating an environment where Jewish students are isolated from others purely because of the fact they are Jewish," she says.
Avital organises events for her university's Jewish Society and says she finds it depressing that their social events require security.
"When we host a party with drinks and music, which is meant to be entirely fun, a number of students have to stand outside with stab-proof vests and count the number of people going in and make sure that no-one's trying to bother what is essentially a student house party.
One of the more extreme examples of antisemitic attacks was the kidnapping of London-based Israeli record producer Itay Kashti.
In 2024, Itay received an email from what looked like a record company inviting him to a songwriting camp at a property in the Welsh countryside.
When he arrived in a taxi, the driver helped him in with his luggage, at which point they were both attacked by three masked men. The driver managed to get away, but Itay was handcuffed to a radiator. He eventually managed to free himself and escape.
"I went out of the cottage and I was covered in blood and my shirt was completely torn," he recalls.
The taxi driver had alerted police, and three men were arrested. All three pleaded guilty to kidnap and were each jailed for eight years and one month.
The judge said Itay "was targeted due to his Jewish heritage", with the kidnappers "motivated by events taking place elsewhere in the world".
Itay says "there's a lot of prejudice against Jewish people in general, and Israel in particular".
"People may like or not like their politics in the same way I don't like the politics in Israel," he adds. "You can like or dislike the politics of the country. But it doesn't mean you need to judge the individual people that come out of it on that basis."
Cases like Itay's are extreme and rare – but there are fears antisemitism is being normalised and that, in turn, could pave the way for serious violence, even terror.
The government has
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