munaeem | 04 February, 2007 10:11
VIA AFP
The UK suffered its highest number of anti-Semitic incidents in a generation last year, with a spike during Israel's war against Hezbollah in Lebanon, a Jewish advocacy group has said.
The Community Security Trust (CST), a British Jewish group which monitors racism, recorded 594 anti-Semitic incidents, the highest level since it began collating figures in 1984, and up 31 percent from 2005.
The incidents included assaults such as a stabbing or beatings, damage and desecration of property such as Nazi swastikas and other graffiti daubed on tombstones or synagogues, threats, verbal abuse, and anti-Semitic literature.
Incidents were allegedly committed by people of south Asian Muslim origin, as well as by white and black people.
After the figures were published Thursday, CST communications director Mark Gardner said British Jews now tended to come under attack from an unlikely coalition of the far left, the far right and Islamist extremist groups.
"It's not really got anything to do with Holocaust-related anti-Semitism. It's more subtle, more complex -- it's something that feeds off global communications," he said.
Among the incidents were 112 violent assaults, including four involving "extreme violence" that could have left the victim dead or very seriously injured, the group said in a report.
One man was stabbed with a knife, another hit over the head with an iron bar, another was left semi-consious whe struck by a bottle and a fourth suffered a broken leg when he was punched and kicked to the floor.
Other violent incidents involved Jewish people, including children, being punched or physically roughed up.
The CST found that more than one-fifth of last year's anti-Semitic incidents took place during the 34-day war between Israel and the Shiite Muslim guerrilla group Hezbollah in Lebanon in July and August.
These 134 incidents included 28 against individual Jewish people in public places, 29 against synagogues, 42 against Jewish organisations and 12 aimed at prominent public figures like members of parliament and journalists.
The number of daily incidents peaked at 12 on July 31, the day after Israeli forces launched a strike on Qana in southern Lebanon, killing a number of civilians.
A cross-party parliamentary inquiry warned last September that anti-Jewish sentiment was entering mainstream British society.
The group of lawmakers made several recommendations, including a Crown Prosecution Service investigation into why fewer than one in 10 anti-Semitic attacks result in a prosecution.
Britain's Jewish population now stands about 300,000, and includes prominent figures in politics, the arts, the media, business, medicine and academia.
| « | February 2007 | » | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mo | Tu | We | Th | Fr | Sa | Su |
| 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | |||
| 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10 | 11 |
| 12 | 13 | 14 | 15 | 16 | 17 | 18 |
| 19 | 20 | 21 | 22 | 23 | 24 | 25 |
| 26 | 27 | 28 | ||||
