Gaza incursion triggered anti-Semitism

TEL AVIV, Israel, April 20 (UPI) -- Israel's "Operation Cast Lead" military actions in Gaza triggered a sharp increase in worldwide anti-Semitic incidents, an Israeli analysis reported Monday.

In a survey of global anti-Semitism in 2008 and 2009 conducted by the Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism at Tel Aviv University, the European Jewish Congress found that a wave of 1,000 anti-Semitic incidents swept the world in January as the Israeli military battled the Palestinian militant group Hamas in Gaza.

"These included both violent activities (arson attacks on synagogues, assaults on Jewish individuals, desecration of cemeteries, and vandalizing of Jewish property and Holocaust monuments), and verbal and visual expressions (insults, threats, gruesome caricatures and stormy demonstrations)," the report said.

The demonstrations were "more extreme, intensive and vociferous than was hitherto known" and showed a "high degree of mobilization" that included Muslims, leftists, rightists and human rights activists, the analysis said.

The report found 250 anti-Semitic incidents in Britain in January compared with 35 in the same month a year earlier. They included 90 violent cases, three times that of January 2008. Incidences of violence tailed off in February and March, but virulent verbal and visual incidences remained high, the survey found.