The Institute for Jewish Policy Research has quantified what many assumed anecdotally: the October 7 attacks and subsequent Gaza war have consolidated British Jewish identity around Israel, not diffused it. Zionist self-identification rose from 59% to 66% between 2022 and 2025. Emotional attachment to Israel — measured as 'very emotionally attached' — jumped 13 points to 51%. The percentage viewing antisemitism as a 'very big problem' tripled to 50% by June 2025. The mechanism is not mysterious. JPR director Jonathan Boyd names it directly: attachment growth is 'directly associated with concern about antisemitism in Britain' and with perceptions of Israel as homeland-under-threat. Seventy percent of British Jews have close friends and family in Israel. When Israel feels insecure, British Jews rally. This is a security-identity feedback loop, not an ideological conversion. The most analytically interesting finding is the divergence among Jewish Green Party supporters. Their 'very emotionally attached to Israel' figure sits at 7%, down a point. Only 3% see supporting Israel as 'very important' to Jewish identity — an 8-point drop. Just 14% identify as Zionist, down 3 points. Their emigration-to-Israel score collapsed from 0.7 to 0.2 on a 0-10 scale. These are not small margins of disagreement; they describe a fundamentally different community operating under the same religious umbrella. Boyd's explanation is structural: Jewish Greens tend to be secular, and their social frameworks are 'much more open' to influence from wider British political culture. The implication is that political environment, not theology, is the strongest predictor of where British Jews land on Israel. Conservative voters led the growth in pro-Israel and Zionist sentiment and were most concerned about antisemitism. The generational signal is quieter but real. Sixteen- to 29-year-olds were the only age group where Israel's importance to identity actually ticked down — by one point to 27%. Boyd attributes this to a generation whose formative experience of Israel has been 'much more about Gaza and Hamas' than the founding mythology or security anxieties of their parents. The study's timing creates a notable gap: it predates the Manchester synagogue attack, the Iran conflict, and new trade sanctions — all events likely to amplify the trends measured. It also predates the Green party conference motion declaring 'Zionism is racism,' which will test whether the Jewish-Green divergence accelerates further or triggers an exodus from the party. Previous JPR research found up to one in five British Jews were backing the Greens by June 2024. Boyd's policy prescription is pointed: unless tougher government rhetoric on Israel is balanced with acknowledgment of why Israel matters to Jews, the effect is to push 'Israelis rightwards and British Jews away.' The implication for UK policymakers is that Israel-Palestine positioning is now a domestic community-relations variable, not merely a foreign-policy stance. Support for a two-state solution among British Jews has already fallen to 49% — the lowest on record.
