Jewish mother Kelly Kaye exposes relentless antisemitic bullying her autistic son endured inside east London school classrooms as MPs confront rising hate across Britain

Kelly Kaye still struggles to talk about her son’s school years without her voice shaking.

What should have been ordinary teenage milestones — science lessons, GCSE exams, prom photos — instead became markers of trauma for her autistic son, Josh.

It started with something ugly but almost unbelievable: a classmate drawing a swastika, shoving it in his face and laughing.

That moment, she says, wasn’t an isolated incident.

It was the beginning of two relentless years of antisemitic abuse at their east London school.

Josh, who was just 14 when it escalated, was regularly called “Yid” and “Jewish scum.”

In science class, students would deliberately switch on Bunsen burners, make exaggerated hissing sounds and shout warnings like, “Be careful, there’s a Jew over there,” mimicking the gas chambers of the Holocaust.

Some gave Nazi salutes and yelled “Heil Hitler.”

One younger pupil once screamed “kill the Jews” and followed him all the way home.

Complaints Filed — But Little Changed

Kelly and her husband repeatedly contacted the school.

Email after email. Meeting after meeting.

She says she documented everything.

By the time Josh finished his GCSEs, her compiled complaints ran to 80 pages.

Yet the response that stung most came from the headmaster, who reportedly told Josh to “be more resilient.”

When the teenager finally snapped and told one of his tormentors to “f*** off,” he was the one given detention.

Kelly remembers looking at her son’s prom photographs.

He pointed out the classmates who had targeted him at one point or another.

She counted 40. “This wasn’t a handful of kids,” she says. “It felt pervasive.”

Eventually, she removed her daughter from the same school after someone carved a swastika into a desk.

Even that, she claims, required three separate complaints before the school acted.

A Crisis Far Bigger Than One Family

Kelly’s story was one of several shared at an emergency summit held at the House of Commons this week.

Politicians, peers, and campaigners gathered alongside television presenter Rachel Riley and journalist Daniel Finkelstein to address what advocates are calling an antisemitism crisis in Britain.

Jeremy Wootliff of Victims of Antisemitism and the Grassroot Peoples’ Support Network said the country is facing something unprecedented.

According to data released by the Community Security Trust, Jews are now eight times more likely to be victims of religious hate crime than any other group in the UK.

The charity recorded 3,700 anti-Jewish incidents in 2025 alone — a 280 percent rise since 2015.

Campaigners argue the hostility was growing long before the October 7, 2023 Hamas attacks on Israel and the subsequent war in Gaza, but tensions since then have made things worse.

Violence Moves From Words to Bloodshed

Statistics became even more chilling in October 2025.

Britain saw its first antisemitic terror attack on domestic soil when worshippers Melvin Cravitz and Adrian Daulby were killed at Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester.

An Islamist extremist, reportedly wearing a fake suicide belt, rammed through the gates before attacking civilians with a knife.

For many in the Jewish community, that moment confirmed fears that rhetoric had crossed into lethal violence.

Wootliff warns that antisemitism is no longer confined to online spaces or fringe groups.

He claims it is showing up in schools, hospitals, workplaces and universities across the country.

“We are only about 270,000 people in Britain,” he said. “And many are leaving.”

Stories From Across the UK

Victoria, from Ilford in Essex, says she has received threats online calling her a “genocidal, baby-killing” extremist.

On the day of her son’s bar mitzvah, racial abuse was allegedly hurled outside their synagogue.

Her son later endured classmates telling him he “should have been put in the ovens.”

Zoe, a waitress in Hastings, says customers called her a “baby killer” and “terrorist.”

She has asked for her religion to be removed from her medical records because she no longer feels safe disclosing it.

Ryan, a social media manager in Manchester, says a colleague who openly supported Hamas threatened to “gut” him.

In Glasgow, Edward — a teacher — was suspended and arrested after two pupils allegedly colluded with a pro-Palestinian group to fabricate sexual assault allegations.

Although cleared, he says he is still called a “paedophile” in the street.

Asher, a student in Bangor, claims Jewish students have been physically assaulted multiple times and that the only Jewish-owned business near his university has been vandalised repeatedly without prosecutions.

An emergency dispatch worker described colleagues insisting “all Jews were racist” and said she was investigated for her “Zionist beliefs” when she raised concerns.

The Education Question

Kelly believes something fundamental has gone wrong.

“Young people shouldn’t be like this,” she says.

“If we can’t teach our children not to abuse others, what are we doing?”

Her son is now 19 and thriving in college.

But she still worries about what younger Jewish pupils are facing.

Some campaigners have compared the current atmosphere to early 1930s Germany — a comparison that understandably provokes strong reactions.

Wootliff says the point is not that Britain is Nazi Germany, but that warning signs should not be ignored.

“We’re going in that direction,” he argues.

“We are the canaries in the coal mine.”

Is Security Funding Enough?

Both Labour and Conservative politicians have pledged additional funding for security at Jewish schools and synagogues, often channelled through CST.

But critics argue that extra guards and CCTV cameras address symptoms, not causes.

“It’s like putting a plaster on an amputated limb,” Victoria says.

They want education reforms, clearer disciplinary standards in schools, tougher hate crime enforcement and stronger online regulation.

The broader debate now centres on free speech, political protest and where criticism of Israel ends and antisemitic hostility begins — an issue that has become increasingly polarised since the Gaza conflict.

What’s Next?

Campaigners are pushing for a national action plan that goes beyond security grants.

They want mandatory antisemitism education in schools, clearer workplace protections, swifter prosecution of hate crimes and cross-party unity in Parliament.

There are also calls for Ofsted inspections to examine how schools handle antisemitic incidents and for universities to face penalties if Jewish students are not adequately protected.

Whether those demands translate into policy remains to be seen.

But advocates say the status quo is no longer acceptable.

For families like Kelly’s, the stakes are deeply personal.

Summary

A Jewish mother has revealed how her autistic teenage son endured two years of daily antisemitic abuse at his east London school, including Holocaust taunts involving Bunsen burners and Nazi salutes.

Despite repeated complaints, she says the school failed to act decisively and even disciplined her son when he defended himself.

Her account is one of many shared at an emergency summit at the House of Commons, where campaigners cited alarming figures from the Community Security Trust showing a 280 percent rise in antisemitic incidents since 2015.

With cases ranging from school bullying to workplace threats and even a deadly terror attack in Manchester, advocates warn Britain faces a growing antisemitism crisis — and they are demanding urgent, systemic action.