'Wave of hatred' Warning as Attacks on Jews Hits Record High
London Daily Mail
1st February 2007
Attacks on Britain's Jews have risen to the highest level since records
began.
A study published today shows the number of reported anti-Semitic incidents
has almost tripled in 10 years, with more than half the attacks last year
taking place in London.
The findings prompted the report's authors to warn of a "wave of hatred"
against Jews.
The number of incidents increased to 594 last year, up by 31 per cent on the
previous year.
Violent assaults soared to 112, up by more than a third on 2005.
Incidents ranged from the unprovoked stabbing of a Jewish man in north
London to the sending of hate mail and the vandalism of Jewish cemeteries
and synagogues.
The Anti-Semitic Incidents Report 2006, compiled by the Community Security
Trust (CST), responsible for combating anti-Semitism in the UK, blames the
huge rise on a number of factors ranging from Israel's invasion of Lebanon
last summer to the jailing of the historian David Irving in Austria for
denying the Holocaust.
The threatened suspension of Ken Livingstone as Mayor for comments made to a
Jewish Evening Standard reporter triggered 11 anti-Semitic incidents,
according to the report.
When the figures were first compiled in 1984, there were just 154 reported
incidents, about a quarter of the total for last year.
Mark Gardner, CST spokesman said of the level of hate crimes: "This is
unacceptable racism, that many Jews had hoped and believed was a thing of
the past.
"Today's anti-Semitism is a wave of hatred, intimidation and abuse against
British Jews, who are stupidly blamed and randomly attacked over
international tensions for which they bear no responsibility."
Incidents last year include:
.
An Orthodox Jew punched in the face and almost pushed off a Tube platform by
an Arab man who screamed: "Get back to Stamford Hill, I want to kill you
all"
.
A Jewish man walking to synagogue with his two young sons suffered a broken
leg after being punched and kicked by a white man shouting "f***ing Jew"
.
Seventy incidents of desecration and damage to synagogues, cemeteries,
Jewish schools and private homes with attacks including swastikas daubed on
walls
.
Savage assault of a 12-year-old Jewish girl Jasmine Kranat, who was beaten
unconscious on a north London bus by two teenage girls who asked her first
if she was Jewish.
The physical descriptions of perpetrators in 205 of the incidents show 96
were by white people, 28 by black people, 60 by Asians and 16 by Arabs. The
report has been passed to ministers.
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