Anti-Semitic Violence Surged 40% Worldwide Last Year

Jewish community in France face an unprecedented
 wave of anti-Semitic attacks

The number of violent anti-Semitic attacks around the world surged nearly 40% last year, according to a report released Wednesday by researchers at Tel Aviv University in Israel.

The report found there were 766 recorded incidents against Jewish people in 2014 — the worst year for attacks since 2009. It was released ahead of Israel commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, which begins Wednesday at sundown.

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The attacks were "perpetrated with or without weapons and by arson, vandalism or direct threats against Jewish persons or institutions such as synagogues, community centers, schools, cemeteries and monuments as well as private property," the authors of the report, based at the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University, said. In 2013, there were 554 registered incidents.

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"The overall feeling among many Jewish people is one of living in an intensifying anti-Jewish environment that has become not only insulting and threatening, but outright dangerous, and that they are facing an explosion of hatred towards them as individuals, their communities, and Israel, as a Jewish state," the study said.

There was a sharp rise in the number of incidents seen in the United Kingdom (141 in 2014 compared to 95 in 2013); Australia (30 vs. 11); Germany (76 vs. 36); Austria (9 vs. 4); Italy (23 vs. 12); and Sweden (17 vs. 3).

In this Jan. 13 file photo, family and relatives of four 
French Jewish victims of the attack on a kosher grocery 
store in Paris, attend their funeral in Jerusalem.
(Photo: AP)

However, the highest number of violent cases recorded in 2014 was in France, which saw 164 incidences compared to 141 in 2013. In recent years, the country has consistently seen the most reported cases of anti-Semitic violence worldwide, the report said. In January, four people were killed at a kosher supermarket during a terrorist attack in Paris.

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