Report: Anti-Semitism rises, but violence against Jews falls

Violent attacks on Jews worldwide dropped in 2017 despite a rise in other forms of anti-Semitism, researchers report , in a year characterized by normalization and mainstreaming of anti-Semitism not seen in Europe since World War II.

Researchers at Tel Aviv University say assaults specifically targeting Jews fell 9 percent last year. They record 327 cases compared to 361 in 2016, which had already been the lowest number in a decade.

But they note attacks were far more brazen. Most dramatic were a pair of cases in France, where a Jewish woman was thrown to her death out of her apartment window and a Holocaust survivor was stabbed and burned to death in her Paris home.

Threats, harassment and insults have also driven thousands of French Jews to relocate.

Tel Aviv University’s Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry releases the report every year on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust memorial day, which begins Wednesday at sundown.

Increased security measures are credited with reducing violence, but it may be masking a trend of anti-Semitism becoming more mainstream and acceptable, particularly in European politics. The report describes a toxic triangle made up of the rise of the extreme right, radical Islamism and a heated anti-Zionist discourse on the left accompanied by anti-Semitic expressions.

— AP