Yesterday, Tel Aviv University's Kantor Center (along with the European Jewish Congress)
announced the release of a new report
Worldwide Report on Antisemitism 2013. (The report is also listed in my posting earlier today of
Recent Articles of Interest.) The Kantor Center's report is one of several similar surveys including the European Union's
Discrimination and hate crime against Jews in EU Member States (see
prior posting) and the ADL's 2013
Annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents (see
prior posting). The Kantor Center's report appears to be more conservative than others in its methodology for counting incidents, finding:
554 registered violent antisemitic acts perpetrated with weapons or without, by arson, vandalism or direct threats against Jewish persons or institutions such as synagogues, community centers, schools, cemeteries, monuments as well as private property
However its narrative appears much grimmer:
Anti-Zionism, which is rampant in the west, cannot explain the present level of antisemitism, nor can it be explained by the rise of right-wing extremist parties (each having its own wider agenda), or by the economic crisis of 2008 (which is no longer ‘news’). No Middle East event tied to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict occurred in 2013, nor can elevated data of antisemitic incidents in this year be attributed to hate-generated hordes of admirers sparked by the attack on the Toulouse Jewish school in March 2012. In short, what we witness in 2013 is ‘net antisemitism’ per se.
