ANTI-SEMITIC ATTACKS UP 50%

Report: Anti-Semitic attacks up 50% (JPost)
Global anti-Semitism is spiraling upward, driven by xenophobia and cultural clashes in Europe and by increasingly virulent anti-Zionism in the Arab world, according to a comprehensive study of anti-Semitic incidents released by a Tel Aviv University research institute on Sunday.

"Once, when we were talking about anti-Semitism we were talking about [desecrated] gravestones," Dr. Roni Stauber of TAU's Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism told The Jerusalem Post. Now the main targets are religious Jews, since "they are identifiable" to attackers, he said.

There was a dramatic rise "in physical, verbal and visual manifestations" of anti-Semitism in 2006, according to the Roth Institute, which prepared the report. It was funded by the World Jewish Congress.

In all, 590 incidents of violence or vandalism were recorded in 2006, a 15 percent increase from 2004 and a seven-fold increase from 1989.

The 2006 figures also represents a 31% increase from 2005, when anti-Semitic incidents declined after several years of increases.

"In two countries - France and Norway - chief rabbis are calling on Jews not to step outside with Jewish symbols on their person," said Prof. Dina Porat, who edited the report along with Stauber....

The breakdown of anti-Semitic incidents worldwide is heavily tilted toward Western Europe, which witnessed 54% of them, followed by North America - whose Jewish population is over five times the size of Western Europe's - with just 17% and the former Soviet Union with 13%.

Britain, with 136 "major violent incidents," saw a 20-year high in 2006. France, with 97 such incidents, witnessed a 45% increase and the French-speaking regions of Canada saw a doubling of violent attacks over a year earlier.