Anti-Semitic Incidents Dip By 12% Worldwide — Rise In U.S.

(JTA) — The number of anti-Semitic incidents worldwide has decreased by 12 percent in 2016 despite a spike in cases in the United Kingdom and the United States, Tel Aviv University’s watchdog on anti-Jewish racism said.

The data were published Sunday, Israel’s national day of remembrance of the Holocaust, in the annual “Antisemitism Worldwide” report by the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University.

The report is a global overview combining surveys from recognized watchdogs from dozens of countries, including nearly all European Union member states. The decrease in the overall number of incidents mirrored a decline in the number of violent assaults, from 410 in 2015 to 361 the previous year, the report said.

Bucking the overall decrease in incidents from 2015 was the recording in 2016 of 1,309 incidents in the United Kingdom alone, constituting a 36 percent increase over the 2015 tally.

In the United States, “there was an alarming rise of 45 percent in anti-Semitic incidents on university campuses, where Jewish students are facing increasing hate and intolerance,” Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said in a statement about the report.