The Jewish community is struggling to get kosher meat in time for the Passover festival due to the Northern Ireland Protocol, the DUP has said.

The post-Brexit trade arrangements have also disrupted supplies of specialist cricket soil known as loam from Great Britain.

Extra paperwork has caused a series of bureaucratic obstacles since the end of the post-Brexit transition period.

Northern Ireland has a small Jewish community centred around north Belfast and a central part of the Passover meal is lamb.

First Minister Arlene Foster said: “This is something which is very concerning.

“We have a very small Jewish community here in Northern Ireland. The fact that they cannot access kosher meat is something that would cause me a great deal of concern.”

The Jewish Passover festival begins towards the end of this month and it is one of the most important dates in the faith’s calendar.

The UK Government has unilaterally extended some grace periods associated with the protocol in a bid to avoid a cliff-edge plunge into extra paperwork.

The protocol is a post-Brexit arrangement designed to keep the Irish border open by ensuring Northern Ireland continues to follow the EU’s trading rules.

The DUP has vowed to overthrow it over fears it damages the integrity of the UK internal market and Northern Ireland’s place in it.

Graffiti with the word “Traitors” has been sprayed on DUP offices in the port town of Larne shared by East Antrim MP Sammy Wilson and the Minister of Agriculture, Environment and Rural Affairs (Daera), Gordon Lyons.

Mr Wilson has been a vociferous critic of the protocol while Mr Lyons has suspended construction on permanent border posts required as part of the UK’s withdrawal deal from the EU.

Other graffiti in the unionist town of Larne said “DUP Out” and “RIP GFA”, a reference to the 1998 Good Friday Agreement peace deal.

A number of anti-protocol signs have also been erected around the town.

Mrs Foster told the Stormont Assembly the protocol was affecting trade and identity for those who view themselves as unionists.

“There is a need not just to tinker at the edges, there is a need to have a replacement of the protocol.

“There is a need to deal with that urgently because there is damage happening to the economy in Northern Ireland.”

The EU has threatened legal action and described the decision to extend the grace periods as a potential breach of international law.

Mrs Foster said the variation had to happen otherwise some product lines would have quickly dried up.

“I listened very clearly to what the business community want and they do not want the continuation of what we have seen in this protocol.”

Meanwhile, Ulster Unionist Assembly member and keen weekend cricketer John Stewart has said confirmation that bringing in specialist cricket pitch soil – “loam” – from England is banned because of the protocol is farcical.

He added: “Here we have another example of the EU using a sledgehammer to crack a non-existent nut.

“There is no threat to the European single market or EU plant health standards by continuing the age-old tradition of bringing in ‘loam’ to create, build and maintain cricket pitches throughout Northern Ireland, and the Republic for that matter.

“Groundsmen across the country have been told that it is currently prohibited and it is not an exaggeration to say that this prohibition could threaten the future of cricket here.”

Read more: Key workers remembered in silent tributes across Northern Ireland

Anti-Semitic abuse recorded by a Jewish community charity fell last year but the number of incidents remained its third highest annual total.

The Community Security Trust (CST) said it had recorded 1,668 anti-Semitic incidents in the UK in 2020, down from 1,813 in 2019, but still the third highest total it has ever recorded.

The highest monthly totals were before lockdown in January (188 incidents) and February (140), and when restrictions were eased in June (178) and July (180).

Amid the pandemic and increased use of video calls, 19 events were so-called Zoom-bombed by anti-Semites interrupting the meetings, the CST said.

The events targeted included online synagogue services, memorial prayers for someone who had died, and a Holocaust survivor’s talk.

The incidents involved anti-Semitic comments in the group chat, verbal abuse, as well as anti-Semitic images or usernames.

Amid the pandemic, there were also 41 incidents linked to Covid-19, including conspiracy theories about Jewish involvement in spreading the virus itself or a hoax about the virus, or expressing a desire that Jews would die from the illness.

While the number of physical assaults decreased from 158 in 2019 to 97 in 2020, there were an additional three – two stabbings and an arson attack – classed as extreme violence.

Incidents of online abuse fell from 700 in 2019 to 634 last year. Those recorded included a flurry of abuse sparked by a series of anti-Semitic tweets by rapper Wiley in July.

The CST recorded 23 incidents linked to users who shared his racist views. He has since been banned from a number of social media sites.

It said that the 634 incidents of online abuse were the second highest yearly total, and that 527 of them took place on social media.

They included 389 on Twitter, 66 on Facebook, seven on YouTube and 65 on other social media.

The number of anti-Semitic incidents recorded at people’s homes rose from 118 in 2019 to 158 last year, which the Trust put down to perpetrators lashing out at those in close proximity as frustration built during lockdown.

CST chief executive Mark Gardner said: “CST had hoped that anti-Semitic incidents would fall by more than this during 2020.

“The fact that they didn’t means we must remain even more vigilant for 2021, especially as the economic impact of Covid-19 may cause more extremism and division within society.”

Today is a landmark judgment that has been brought against Alison Chabloz who was convicted of two counts of causing obscene material to be sent and one of sending obscene material. These incidents occurred in 2016. It is another line that is drawn on those who think that freedom of expression entitles them to make grossly offensive and menacing statements: in Chabloz’s case, denying the Holocaust and accusing Jewish people, including Holocaust survivors, of fabricating claims of genocide.

Holocaust denial is far more than a false presentation of history. So-called Holocaust ‘revisionists’ are motivated by their own Jew-hatred.  Their aim is to expose the Jewish people to further hatred by making the indefensible claim that Jews are lying about a historical reality which destroyed the lives of more than a third of the world’s Jewish population.

I have seen the impacts of the Holocaust first-hand having visited the death camps in Poland and the Yad Vashem memorial to the Holocaust’s victims.  I saw the personal items of those who walked to their deaths in the vain hope that they were having a shower. They were killed because they were Jews.  Seeing the shoes, the wedding rings, the photographs and confiscated property left an indelible mark on me. It is our duty to never forget the victims and to educate the generations that come after us about the vicious consequences of antisemitism.

The sad reality is that people like Chabloz are adept at exploiting people and playing off communities against each other to further their malicious aims. Chabloz even attempted to use the national project opposing hatred against Muslims, Tell MAMA, to pursue her vendetta against Jewish people.  In 2013 and 2014, she sent written reports to Tell MAMA in the hope that this would lead to the investigation and humiliation of Jewish people for pushing anti-Muslim hatred.  In reality, she didn’t care about the Muslim community or the Tell MAMA project.  This was a disguised attempt to target Jews, because they were Jewish. In September 2014, when we learned of Chabloz’s disturbing antisemitic views, we cut off all communication. I am glad to see that today justice has been served.   

There’s a lesson for all of us here.  In the fight against hatred and discrimination, not everyone who offers help and assistance is a friend. Their smiles may hide other motives, reinforcing the need for enhanced due diligence and vetting of sources.  Alison Chabloz’s antisemitism and Holocaust denial show her true colours, which run totally contrary to the values of Tell MAMA, which works closely with groups like the Community Security Trust.

That’s why Tell MAMA and Faith Matters have added layers of compulsory internal due diligence checks on all those who communicate or engage with us. Whilst this has increased our admin load, rigorous vetting is essential in today’s world. Chabloz’s attempt to divide the Muslim and Jewish communities has also resulted in us seeking to work ever more closely with Jewish communities in the fight against antisemitism. We are partnering with the Jewish community to ensure that the younger generation understand what antisemitism is and that it is an affront not only to the victims and survivors of the Holocaust, but also the dignity of Jewish communities today.

We must send out the strongest possible message that no-one can take sides in the battle against hate. There is no ‘picking and choosing’. In the end, antisemites have no problem abusing both Jews and Muslims – something we must never forget.

To effectively fight anti-Muslim hate we must all of us learn about the unique hatred that is antisemitism. I, for one, have sought to further my understanding of Jewish history, culture and heritage. I think it’s important that everyone travels to the sites in Europe where the crimes of the Holocaust were committed and pays homage to the memories of those Jewish brothers and sisters that were murdered only because they were Jewish. Seeing what the Jewish people endured only 70 years ago has helped me see why we should never allow the flags and symbols of terrorist groups that have a history of kidnapping and murdering Jews to be displayed on the streets of London.

We must protect the memory of the Holocaust, highlight it, shout about it.  It’s everyone’s responsibility to tackle anti-Semitism wherever it is found.   Hatred against Jews is an attack on our society as a whole and an attack on our common values. It’s our responsibility to show our Jewish brothers and sisters that they are not alone.

Fiyaz Mughal was the Director of Tell MAMA from 2012-2017 and is the Director of Faith Matters

“When my family helped to form the Labour Party in 1906, they suffered terribly because of that. The Jewish community in Leeds stood beside them and supported them. That is why I took on the role 13 years ago chairing the All-Party Group. I didn’t expect today when Labour members stand in solidarity with our Jewish colleagues and Jewish communities, to be targeted by an organisation called Momentum, which has happened to all of us who stood in solidarity, but worse than that that, explicitly targeting Jewish members of the Parliamentary Labour Party because they are Jewish. That is what is going on at the moment. I did not expect when I took on this voluntary cross-party role, for my wife to be sent by a Labour Marxist anti-Semite, a dead bird through the post, I didn’t expect my son after an Islamist death threat to open the door in the house as a school boy to the bomb squad. I didn’t expect my wife in the last few weeks from a leftist anti-Semite in response to the demonstration to be threatened with rape. I didn’t expect my daughter similarly to have to be rung up in the last few weeks by special branch to check out her movements in this country. No, I didn’t expect any of that.

“And I tell you the principles that we operated on. The very first speech that I made on this, 13 years ago in this chamber, that every party in this house should look after its own backyard first. And I have said that repeatedly on hundreds of occasions since and I have specifically in private letters to every party in this house, repeatedly challenged antisemitism in all parties. And for years action was taken, painful action and I am not sure people welcomed getting the letters and having the discussions with me in all parties, but that was the principle we operated on and we worked cross-party. And I recall that Jewish people used to say, “Is it true that there is a growth in anti-Semitism?”

“We identified 13 years ago the three forms of anti-Semitism. Islamist anti-Semitism, traditional right anti-Semitism and the anti-Semitism of the new left, all documented and discussed in here. It is not new. And those who say it is a smear, a smear, in raising this issue need to publicly apologise and publicly understand what they are doing and saying and the dangers.

“It does not end with me and my family, it does not end with British members of Parliament here, this stuff ends is what happened in Copenhagen, is what happens in Brussels, is what happened in France repeatedly including 4 weeks ago. People murdered because they are Jewish. That’s where this ends. You know this ends and this is the reality now.

“Last night in my constituency – it is constant, explicit anti-Semitism and then the bigger group. The excusers for anti-Semitism, the people who say this is something to do with who the leader of the Labour Party is and in challenging him. No it isn’t, in the 13 years I have been doing this, what Jewish people say to me now is different to what they said 13 years ago. “Is it true that there is a growth in anti-Semitism”, 5 years ago Jewish people would come up to me and say, “we’re concerned that there is a rise in anti-Semitism”.  I am stopped in the street everywhere I go now by Jewish people who say to me very discreetly, “I am scared”. Young people, old people, “I am scared”. You see what happened in France and you see what happened in Belgium and you see what happened in Copenhagen and then you understand why people are scared.

“People who are scared, young Jewish members to go to a Labour Party meeting with me because they are fearful of how they will be intimidated and threatened and how their identity will be challenged

“Any Jewish person is entitled to say and define that they are an anti-Zionist and I have no right to challenge that. Any Jewish person has the right to say, as the vast majority do, “I am a Zionist” and I have no right to deny them that and those that do are racists. And just that change in language by making the word ‘Zionist’ as a pejorative insult by the Labour Party, just that change, would alter the dialogue in this country in a very big way. We all have a choice on what we do, stand in solidarity with the Jewish members of Parliament under attack today, that is the role of Parliamentarians.”

Numerous newspapers have picked up on the ‘Palestine Live’ Facebook group that the Labour Leader, the Rt Hon. Jeremy Corbyn, had once been a participant within. The Labour Party has also moved to suspend members of the secretive group according to Ha’aretz and the issue is not going to go away particularly when so many within Jewish communities are feeling very uneasy with regular reports of anti-Semitic discourse from some within the Labour Party.

Furthermore, the level of mistrust from Jewish communities towards the Labour leadership has sharply risen and this is something that is particularly concerning, given that the Labour Party has historically been at the vanguard of tackling and countering anti-Semitism for decades. Trade Union movements and other Labour affiliated grass-roots movements have made a point of challenging hatred, racism and bigotry where they found it.

However, of late, that gulf between Jewish communities and the Labour Party continues to become a gaping chasm. Reports by David Collier on the ‘Palestine Live’ Facebook page paint a devastating picture of anti-Semitic discussions within the group and full details of the reports can be found here and here. 

The Labour Party has been quick to issue denials around the activity of the Opposition Leader and have stated that he did not mention anything within the social media group that was anti-Semitic in nature. 

In all of this, the Palestinian cause of self-determination is not assisted by those who sit in the United Kingdom and who support the cause of Palestine by promoting anti-Semitic discourse. This also goes for those who couch their anti-Semitism  through the liberal sprinkling of the term ‘Zionist’, a term also used against those who work with Jewish communities and who are from Muslim communities.

The cause of Palestine has sadly been hijacked by many, including Islamist extremists and anti-Semites, who have both done a dis-service to Palestinians, and to many other communities. Such individuals and groups must be called out and held to account, since in the end, they help no-one but promote poison within the heart of communities.