ABSTRACT
This chapter provides different answers to the role of extremism and international trigger events in antisemitic hate crime. The legacy of the Holocaust ensures that the question of antisemitism and hate crimes against Jews will always be of emblematic importance to wider efforts to combat racism and hate crime. Serious antisemitic hate crimes, such as the murder of French Jew Ilan Halimi in 2006, or the desecration of Finsbury Park Synagogue in London in 2002, can attract significant media and political attention and debate. Efforts to reach a common understanding of antisemitic hate crime are further obscured by politicised arguments over the scale of the phenomenon, the role of different types of political extremism in antisemitic hate crime and the identities of antisemitic hate crime offenders. In the United Kingdom, official data for antisemitic hate crime has only been published nationally since 2009.
