The figures in CST’s latest antisemitic incidents report may not surprise many JC readers, but we cannot regard them as anything less than wholly unacceptable in every way.
The annual total, the highest ever, three per cent up on the record high 2016 figure, will of course grab the headlines, but the overall trend is what matters most.
The most explicit way of showing this is to say that from April 2016 to October 2017, inclusive, CST recorded more than 100 antisemitic incidents each month — that’s 19 months in a row. In the ten years before April 2016, we recorded over 100 incidents a month on six separate occasions, mostly in sudden and direct correlation to Israel being at war.
Obviously, I hope that the percentage of antisemitic incident victims and witnesses contacting CST increases year on year, otherwise we are not doing our job properly. But even accounting for possible improvements in the rate of reporting, it is clear that the situation across 2016 and 2017 has been worse than at any similar length in the preceding decade.
