In May, Education Secretary Bridget Phillipson called antisemitism among British schoolchildren “a national emergency”. She wasn’t exaggerating. The Telegraph has revealed a shocking rise in antisemitism in UK schools — a development that threatens the safety of Jewish children and staff, and tears at the fabric of social cohesion.

The teachers’ union NASUWT found that 51% of Jewish teachers have experienced antisemitism in the workplace. Of those working in non-faith schools, a whopping 79% had experienced antisemitism. This is unsurprising considering the upward trend in antisemitic incidents in British education. The Community Security Trust (CST) recorded 162 antisemitic incidents in schools in the first half of 2024 alone, marking a 119% increase on the same period in 2023.

What’s going on in British classrooms, playgrounds, and school corridors is deeply concerning. The National Education Union (NEU) has been fostering a culture hostile to Jews, thanks to its close ties with the Palestine Solidarity Campaign. In one school, a Jewish girl was slapped after being asked her opinion on Israel. In another, a Jewish student was told by a classmate that “I hope you get gassed.” These aren’t isolated incidents. Nazi symbols are increasingly popular, and 44% of Jewish teachers report swastika graffiti in their schools.

Antisemitism is being absorbed and repeated by children and school staff, shaped by both online and offline environments. On social media and gaming platforms — especially smaller platforms overlooked by the Online Safety Act’s stricter measures — antisemitic conspiracy theories and incitement thrive. Children are exposed to Holocaust distortion, “Zionist cabal” narratives, and calls for violence from Islamist, far-Left and far-Right sources. These are sometimes disguised in funny memes or ironic jokes and banter that appeal to children.

Offline, the rise of “family-friendly” Palestine protests — often led by groups such as Parents for Palestine — also blur political activism with hate speech. Children are encouraged to chant “From the river to the sea”, which has been described as antisemitic by former culture secretary Lucy Frazer and “deeply offensive” by former home secretary James Cleverly. Parents for Palestine has promoted material by the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, which glorifies armed struggle. The group has encouraged kids to use an activity book called Intifada Milk, a “children’s story and workbook” which depicts the entire land of Israel as Palestine.

We urgently need a multi-pronged response. Schools must adopt clear antisemitism policies, using the IHRA definition as a benchmark. The non-legally binding working definition, which has already been adopted by the UK Government, states that “antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It’s accompanied by examples that can help tackle antisemitism even in its more subtle manifestations. Schools should also go beyond Holocaust history to include Jewish life, culture and contributions to British society. Interfaith engagement must be expanded.

The Government’s updated extremism definition offers a crucial framework. It recognizes that extremism isn’t always violent — it can be ideological, quiet, corrosive. When antisemitism disguises itself as activism, when it denies Jewish identity, normalizes hate, or romanticizes terror, it becomes extremism. This lens should be applied across the education sector — to external speakers, protest activity, and union messaging alike.

We cannot treat antisemitism as a fringe issue. When children chant for intifada, or teachers demonize Jews, the problem is no longer just prejudice. It’s a warning sign of radicalization, and one we ignore at our peril.

---

Dr Limor Simhony Philpott is a writer and researcher focusing on antisemitism, extremism and defence.

limorsimhony

---

China is trying to catch up with America on artificial intelligence. The Wall Street Journal has reported that Zhipu AI — one of China’s six “AI tiger” LLMs — has released a new model that can rival leading US systems, including Anthropic’s Mythos, in cybersecurity tasks such as pinpointing security bugs. While this marks a milestone in China’s drive to catch up with Western AI capabilities, strong performance on a single benchmark does not mean it has taken the lead. Chinese models still lag behind their Western counterparts in broader capabilities, such as autonomous operation. Skepticism is therefore warranted before resorting to hysterical conclusions, but complacency about the geopolitical implications of China’s AI advances would be an even greater mistake.

On the infrastructure side, Chinese AI is still constrained by access to advanced chips, with American labs way ahead in computing capacity as well as investment. Analysis from earlier this year suggests that Chinese models are likely to be at least a few months behind those in the US. But they are still continuing to make progress, or that the geopolitical importance of AI will be decided only by whose LLM has ventured deeper into the technological frontier. The practical applications of AI, countries’ to capture foreign markets, and the application of AI into the real economy will matter just as much.

Here, China may hold an advantage. As with its dominance across many critical supply chains, Beijing may not need to produce the most advanced AI systems — only those that are affordable and widely deployable. In doing so, it could consolidate global influence by supplying functional, low-cost AI at scale.

Beijing seems to be pursuing exactly that path, developing an AI “open-source” strategy that offers affordable, widely available AI models for companies and individuals to use and modify as they wish. The production of the DeepSeek AI model, which matched the performance of Silicon Valley tools such as ChatGPT at a fraction of the cost for users, created goodwill among Chinese models with developers.

The four most popular models on OpenRouter, an AI hardware platform for developers, are now all Chinese. The goal for China is not only to win the frontier-model race, but to make its systems the default layer of AI adoption across industries and global markets. For most economies, the choice is increasingly between an affordable tool they can deploy now and a more robust one that may be out of reach.

And while the countries adopting Chinese models may be exposed to political pressure and cyber threats from Beijing, safer and more capable alternatives matter little if they are unaffordable. American AI companies are already under pressure to monetize products whose operating costs are rising. If Chinese open-source models become the cheap default for startups, universities, governments and businesses across the developing world, then America’s AI lead will be eroded from below.

Perhaps more concerning for America in the long run is how AI can give Chinese manufacturing even more strength, through the ongoing integration of AI as a general-purpose technology. China’s new Five-Year Plan mentioned AI more than 50 times and includes an “AI+” action plan aimed at spreading AI across the economy.

Beijing has been pioneering automation of its critical infrastructure for years, with promising recent results in increasing warplane production capacity. In that regard, China’s open-model strategy and manufacturing dominance will reinforce each other. Cheap, adaptable models accelerate deployment across the real economy while those deployments generate real-world data and use cases that can feed back into further model improvement.

The United States should not dismiss the importance of its lead in the AI race. That lead worries Beijing, not least because a more automated Chinese economy would also become more vulnerable to AI-generated cyber threats. But nor should Washington assume that China cannot catch up with American capabilities over time.

This AI competition represents part of a broader struggle over tech supply chains and geopolitical influence. Decisions over whether to adopt US or Chinese models could produce a more fragmented global reality, with different regions relying on different cloud providers, chips and security structures. The result will likely be a global economy which is divided into competing spheres, rather than one which produces a single winner.

---

Miquel Vila is a political and geopolitical risk consultant focusing on industrial strategy, critical infrastructure and global supply chains.

miquelvilam

---