A pro-Israel rally in England. Photo: Screenshot.

Sarah Colborne, director of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign in the UK, admitted that the group’s supporters use social media sites and protest demonstrations to “peddle hatred and intolerance” of Jews, the UK’s Jewish Chronicle reported on Thursday.

The acknowledgement came after the UK’s Community Security Trust this week said that 47 anti- Semitic incidents had been reported in the first two weeks of July, compared to 58 for all of July 2013, representing “almost double what would be expected.”

At least 30 incidents appeared to be directly linked to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the CST said, adding that it was “especially concerned by incidents in which people attending pro-Palestinian demonstrations have turned anti-Semitic.”

The PSC has staged more than 20 demonstrations around the UK in the past week, including one it claimed attracted 10,000 people outside the Israeli embassy, in London. (Police estimates were of 3,000.)

Other PSC events were held in Leicester, Bristol, the West Midlands, Bradford and Liverpool, while one is planned for outside Downing Street, the office of the UK prime minister, on Saturday, the JC said.

The JC quoted Jewish blogger Richard Millett, who attended the PSC demonstration in London, who wrote that protesters were “mocking the Holocaust” and “disfiguring the Israeli flag,” the JC reported. Millett also photographed demonstrators wearing T-shirts comparing Israel’s treatment of Gazans with the Nazis treatment of Jews during the Holocaust.

Millett said: “I knew I had outstayed my welcome when a protester grabbed me and shouted ‘a Zionist!'”

Colborne said, “We disagree fundamentally with any attempts to compare actions of the Israeli government to the Holocaust,” and that the “PSC has responded as fast as we can to remove, ban and report comments which violate our Facebook policy.”