Anti-Semitic Incidents In Britain At All-Time High For 2nd Year Straight

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By JTA February 1, 2018

(JTA) — The number of anti-Semitic attacks recorded in the United Kingdom rose slightly in 2017 to 1,382 cases, marking a new all-time record.

The 3-percent increase in 2017 over the previous year was recorded in the annual report of the Community Security Trust, or CST, which is British Jewry’s largest watchdog on anti-Semitism.

In the report published Thursday, CST recorded a 34-percent increase in the number of violent anti-Semitic assaults, from 108 in 2016 to 145 in 2017.

The most common single type of incident recorded by CST in 2017 involved verbal abuse randomly directed at visibly Jewish people in public, accounting for a quarter of the annual tally, or 356 incidents.

CST has recorded anti-Semitic incidents since 1984. In 2013, the charity recorded only 535 incidents. That figure more than doubled in 2014, when Israel launched a military campaign against Hamas in Gaza. The 2015 tally comprised 960 incidents, followed by an increase to 1,346 cases in 2016.

In 420 cases recorded last year, witnesses gave descriptions of the alleged perpetrators. In those cases, 57 percent were described as Europeans and 25 percent as Arab or black.

There have been some improvements in the reporting of anti-Semitic incidents which may have contributed to the continued increase in incident numbers, CST said. The increase in reporting may have owed in part to how allegations of anti-Semitism in the Labour Party, which were widespread in 2016, continued into 2017. “Therefore, antisemitism has attracted public debate and been reported on extensively in the national media,” CST noted in its report.

Much of the 2017 increase in incidents owed to their growing prevalence in Manchester, home to the kingdom’s second-largest Jewish community.

In the Greater Manchester area, CST recorded 261 incidents in 2017 compared to 206 in 2016, an increase of 27 percent. Meanwhile, incidents in London dropped by 7 percent in 2017 to a total of 773.

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