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

JNS.org – British anti-Semitic incidents have reached their lowest level since 2005. The Community Security Trust (CST) reported that 529 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in 2013, down 18 percent from the previous year. The number of violent assaults—69— remained the same as 2012, marking the lowest level since 2003.

“The levels of reported anti-Semitic incidents in the UK often rise temporarily, or ‘spike,’ in response to ‘trigger events’, often but not always related to Israel or the wider Middle East,” a report by CST, which advises the British Jewish community on safety issues, stated. “The record high total of 931 incidents in 2009 was triggered by anti-Semitic reactions in the UK to the conflict in Gaza and southern Israel that year between Israel and Hamas.”

The 2013 numbers, however, were still much higher than those recorded when CST first began monitoring the issue in 1984. “Any fall in the number of anti-Semitic incidents that take place is to be welcomed, but we are always wary of reading too much into short-term trends as we know that the picture can change considerably from year to year,” CST spokesman Mark Gardner said, according to Reuters.