A Tel Aviv University study covering data from 40 countries found violent anti-Semitic incidents, including attacks with and without weapons, arson, and vandalism or desecration, have been on a downward trend in the past few years.
The report from Tel Aviv’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry was published Sunday, April 30, the first day of the weeklong Days of Remembrance marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in April and May 1943.
European Jewish Congress president Moshe Kantor is concerned that anti-Semitism has merely taken different forms, citing “significant increase of hate online and against less protected targets like cemeteries. This means that in fact, the motivation has not declined and the sense of security felt by many Jewish communities remains precarious.”
The Washington Post reports “research by the World Jewish Congress, for instance, found that anti-Semitic messages from around the world were posted every 83 seconds last year. Many were on Twitter. Such online threats and harassments are more common in English-speaking countries that have traditionally been welcoming to Jews, according to the report. The United Kingdom, for instance, saw 557 anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2016. That’s 11 percent above those recorded within the same time frame in 2015. The total includes vandalisms, hate mails, verbal abuse and social media threats. In the United States, campuses, which the report describes as a hotbed of anti-Semitism, saw a 45 percent increase in anti-Jewish sentiments.”
A 2016 Anti-Defamation League study found that 2.6 million tweets posted from August 2015 to July 2016 contained anti-Semitic language. More than 19,000 of those tweets were directed at thousands of journalists across the country.
