The simmering antisemitism metastasizing across British society resurfaced this week by targeting Jewish children.

On Monday, a group of Jewish teenagers from London’s Hasmonean High School were reportedly assaulted by a racist gang of youths at the Belsize Park underground station. Disturbing accounts describe the young victims being kicked, shoved toward the train tracks and subjected to vile verbal abuse laced with toxic antisemitism.

“The attackers ran ahead of my son and kicked one of his friends to the ground. They were trying to push another kid onto the tracks. They got him as far the yellow line.“They dislodged a tooth and shouted ‘Get out of the city Jew!'” one distraught mother told the Jewish Chronicle.

“The child who was being pushed was being taunted all the way from school and on the way to the tube,” she said. “They followed him. My son is very shaken. He couldn’t sleep last night. He said ‘It’s not fair. Why do they do this to us’.

While the specific ideological motivations driving the Belsize Park attacks remain to be investigated, a broader pattern of escalating violence aimed at Britain’s Jewish population cannot be denied.  According to the Community Security Trust, a stunning 4,103 antisemitic incidents across the UK have been recorded in the aftermath of Hamas’ massacre against southern Israel on October 7.

For a nation still grappling with its legacy of medieval antisemitism enabling centuries of persecution and expulsions, the persistence of such hatred festering again raises larger haunting questions.