Report: Greater London Area Sees 55 Percent Increase in Anti-Semitic Incidents
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by Zach Pontz
A BDS Israel protest in London. Photo: wiki commons.
Anti-Semitism in the UK is growing says Community Security Trust (CST), a charity tasked with protecting the British Jewish community. According to a report released by the organization, 640 antisemitic incidents were recorded by CST in 2012, a 5 per cent increase from the 608 antisemitic incidents recorded in 2011 and the third-highest annual total since records started being kept in 1984.
The most dramatic increase took place in the Greater London area where there was a 55 percent increase in anti-Semitic incidents, from 203 in 2011 to 314 in 2012. CST says this is mostly explained by improved reporting via the introduction of the CST/MPS incident exchange program. The greatest platform for growth in anti-Semitism was social media.
CST recorded 80 antisemitic incidents that involved the use of internet-based social media in 2012, compared to just 12 in 2011. In keeping with the verbal and written theme, the most common single type of incident in 2012 involved verbal abuse randomly directed at visibly Jewish people in public. In 291 incidents, the victims were ordinary Jewish people, male or female, attacked or abused while going about their daily business in public places, compared to 300 such incidents in 2011. Fortunately violent antisemitic assaults were down, with only 11 percent of the total 640 antisemitic incidents recorded in 2012 being categorized as such, compared to 16 percent of the overall total in 2011.
There were 196 antisemitic incidents which showed far right, anti-Israel or Islamist beliefs or motivations in 2012, making up 31 per cent of the overall total of 640 antisemitic incidents, compared to 176 incidents showing such ideas or motivations (29 percent) in 2011.
France has seen an even more dramatic increase. There were two attacks on young Jews in France just this week, one in Marseille and one in Toulouse. The country’s Jewish security service said late last year that there had been a 45 percent increase in anti-Semitic attacks in the country in the last year, most notably a killing spree in Toulouse in March 2012 that left several people dead.
