Blame the general rise in racism
REPORTS OF antisemitic incidents to the Community Security Trust and the police are one of our most important tools for understanding antiJewish hatred.
Sad to say, therefore, that in the first half of 2016, CST recorded 557 incidents, 11 per cent up on the same period last year. The monthly incident levels are now almost double what they were in 2011-2013, so the problem is worsening.
A further 364 reports were received by CST that we deemed not to be antisemitic. So from January to June our staff recorded over 900 reports, most of which required follow-up with vic- tims or the relevant authorities. But that still underestimates the rising challenge in this specific area of our work.
We have, for example, seen numerous social media campaigns against Jewish politicians and activists, especially women. Each campaign can comprise many hundreds of hateful messages. The terrible murder of Jo Cox MP means nobody can dismiss the seriousness of that hatred, and we give support wherever and whenever possible to those targeted.
I would normally caution against reading too much meaning into one set of statistics over a relatively short, six-monthly timeframe. There can be short-term variations in the percentage of incidents that actually get reported, and surveys suggest that around three-quarters of antisemitic incidents go unreported.
Furthermore, each incident counts equally as one, not showing the strength of impact against the victim, or against our wider community.
Similarly, our communal unease over everything from Jihadist terrorism to Labour Party antisemitism controversies cannot be measured by reference to incidents.
Despite these reservations, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the problem is simply worsening.
Since 2000, we have seen sharp escalations in incident levels, triggered by conflict in the Middle East, especially, but not only, those involving Israel. There were no triggers working in the opposite direction, properly reducing the antisemitism.
In some individual years, the overall figure showed reasonably good falls, but the important longer-term trends are increasingly clear and increasingly troubling.
There were no significant trigger events this year, but if we continue at the current rate, 2016 will only just fall shy of