Excerpt:
Jews worldwide are more imperiled than they have been for decades. A new study shows that worldwide incidents of anti-Semitism, from vandalism to arson and beatings, were twice as frequent in 2009 as they were in 2008.
The study, released last Sunday by Tel Aviv University's Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Anti-Semitism and Racism, records that anti-Semitic incidents reached their highest level last year since the university started keeping these records in the 1980s.
What could be the cause of this? A global surge in neo-Nazism? Is the Ku Klux Klan conducting energetic membership drives in Western Europe, where the largest increase in anti-Semitic events occurred? No. According to the report, the increase is largely due to attacks from Muslims, who, the report says, were enraged over Israel's Winter 2009 incursion into Gaza. The Associated Press noted that "in Western Europe, especially Britain and France … protests and anger by Muslim residents boiled over after Israel's invasion of Gaza in December 2008."