Israeli researchers say attacks against Jews spiked in 2014
TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Jewish communities around the world faced an “explosion of hatred” last year, with the number of violent anti-Semitic attacks rising by 38 percent, according to a report released Wednesday by Israeli researchers.
With most of the violence concentrated in Western Europe, Jewish leaders warned that many in their communities are questioning whether they have any future in the region.
The report by researchers at Tel Aviv University recorded 766 incidents — ranging from armed assaults to vandalism against synagogues, schools and cemeteries — compared to 554 in 2013.
Many Jews feel like “they are facing an explosion of hatred toward them as individuals, their communities, and Israel, as a Jewish state,” wrote the researchers from the university’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry.
The center releases the report every year on the eve of Israel’s Holocaust memorial day, which begins Wednesday at sundown.
The researchers said the increase in attacks on Jews was partly linked to last summer’s conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip as well as to what they called a “general climate of hatred and violence” fostered by the rise of the Islamic State group in the Middle East.
