Most of the the UK’s national press will this week carry a striking full-page ad calling for a halt to anti-Semitism and encouraging debate, without hatred.
Issued by the charity Muslims Against Anti-Semitism (MAAS), the ad calls for an end to those using the recent outbreak of hostilities in Gaza to vilify Jews or promote any such tropes.
Headlined “Jews and Muslims. We’re on the same page,” it was produced in collaboration with the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC).
The ad's long copy reads: “Today, we speak as one. At a time when emotions are running high over the desperate situation in the Middle East, Antisemitism and anti-Muslim hatred are spiking alarmingly across the world, and across each side of the political divide."
It adds: “Let us negotiate in good faith in search of a just solution… there are two words, one Arabic, one Hebrew, that share the same root. They both mean peace. Salaam. Shalom.”
The ad ran in The Times today and will appear in The Guardian on Thursday, followed by the Daily Express on Friday. It will also run in the Daily Mirror, Daily Mail, i, Metro, The Daily Telegraph and The Jewish Chronicle on dates to be confirmed.
The campaign was produced on behalf of MAAS in a joint initiative with the JLC, created by BE&R and placed by Fat Rhino Marketing and Communications.
Copy was created by Matt Beaumont and Phil Reedy and all daily titles publishing it are running it for free on a full page.
David Emin, director at Fat Rhino, said the project had no budget, but "it felt the correct thing to do".
He added: "Matt and Phil very quickly produced an amazing piece of copy but informed me that it only really worked as a full page ad. I then approached all the news brands with the concept of what we wanted to do and that they would have to donate a free page.
"Once they had seen the copy every publication agreed to give us a free page virtually immediately. The teams at each newspaper have been terrific and really worked with us. The whole process took three days, from creating the copy to getting the space agreed and booked into each publication.
"Having worked on campaigns for a number of charities we knew that in this instance, if we just ran in the message in a print ad the copy would automatically feed its way into social media and an even wider audience. And it has. The message is about condemning anti-Semitism and anti-Muslim hatred. We are proud to have been involved."
Fiyaz Mughal OBE, from MAAS, said: "As a British Muslim, I felt that I couldn’t sit by and see the vast spike in anti-Semitic hate incidents against the British Jewish communities, without standing with them in solidarity and saying that they are not alone.
"There are very few agencies that could have pulled off something like this - not only as a piece of impactful and memorable copy but also to have secured us so much advertising space.”
The ad follows a similar campaign in collaboration between MAAS and Fat Rhino in 2018, which stated: "We Muslims have one word for Jews. Shalom." It was published at the start of Ramadan and followed a deadly week in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Though that campaign ran only in the Telegraph and Times, the sentiment spread worldwide with many sharing the images on social media.
An Israel-Gaza ceasefire was declared on Friday (21 May) after 11 days of clashes, which were considered the worst violence in the region since 2014.
Long simmering tensions between the two sides broke out into fighting as Hamas and other militants fired rockets at Israeli sites and Israel launched air strikes against militant targets in the Gaza Strip.
More than 250 were killed, the vast majority of them Palestinians.
Thousands of people have since marched through central London in solidarity with Palestine.
Amid this, the Community Security Trust (CST), which advises Britain’s estimated 300,000 Jews on security matters, said it had recorded 106 anti-Semitic incidences since May 8 compared with 19 in the 11 previous days.
Last week, Prime Minister Boris Johnson said the government would support Britain’s Jewish community in any way it could amid a spike in occurrences of anti-Semitism, including an attack on a rabbi.
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