Anti-Semitic attacks worldwide reached a 15-year high in 2004 and will continue to increase exponentially unless countries take preventive measures, says an annual study released by Israel’s Tel Aviv University.
The study, issued on May 4, the eve of Israel’s Holocaust Memorial Day, said that the rise was mostly due to an increase in violent attacks by marginalized Muslim migrants in Europe.
It counted about 500 assaults and acts of violence against Jews in 2004. In contrast, a total of 88 attacks against Jews were recorded in 1989, the report said.
The study said that most of the attacks involved assaults against Jews, arson against synagogues and desecration of Jewish cemeteries. In Western Europe underprivileged Muslim immigrants were found as perpetrators of most of the attacks and in Russia and the United States; attacks against Jews were generally seen as being carried out by far-right extremists. “Jews tend to be assaulted in countries where groups of young immigrants, mainly Muslims but others too, are not well integrated and envy the perceived success of the Jews such as in France, England and Canada,” the report said.
