Number of Anti-Semitic Attacks Victims in 2018 is Highest in 20 Years

The number of Jews who were killed in anti-Semitic attacks all over the world in 2018 has reached its highest level in several decades, Israeli government informed on Sunday, January 27. According to the anti-Semitism 2018 report released by the government of Israel on the International Holocaust Remembrance Day, January 27, during the year, 13 Jews were killed in three separate attacks, UNN informs with reference to DW. 

The attack with the biggest number of victims was committed in October, in the Pittsburgh synagogue (USA), where the shooter killed 11 persons. Moreover, in January, a student was killed in California, and in March, an 85-year-old Mireille Knoll, who survived Holocaust, was killed brutally in her Paris house. 

It is the biggest number of Jews killed as a result of anti-Semitic attacks after the attack on Argentine Jewish community in 1990s (as a result of explosion in the Jewish cultural centre in Buenos Aires in 1994, 85 persons died). 

In the UK, the number of anti-Semitic attacks reaches a record level for the second year running. In particular, British charitable organization Community Security Trust counted more than 100 anti-Semitic incidents per month in 2018, and a quarter of them appeared on social networks. In France, the number of anti-Semitic attacks and threats increased by 69 percent after a two-year fall. Unlike the previous years, anti-Semitic violence in 2018 was headed by neonazis and white racists, the report says. 

Nevertheless, 70 percent of attacks were defined as anti-Israeli in their nature, and their number increased after the USA has relocated the embassy from Tel Aviv in Jerusalem and after the conflicts in the Gaza Strip. Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs Naftali Bennett noted that it is Israel’s responsibility to help millions of brothers and sisters in Diaspora, who face more and more anti-Semitic crimes. He urged the governments all over the world to take strict position against hatred to Jews. 

According to the “Status Report” on the worldwide investigation and prosecution of Nazi war criminals released by Simon Wiesenthal Center in Jerusalem, during the period from April 2017 to March 2018, one person was convicted for the crimes of Nazi era, and three persons more were accused.