Gaza, slump seen spurring rise in anti-Semitism

By Adrian Croft and Avril Ormsby

LONDON (Reuters) - Israel's offensive in Gaza and the global economic downturn have spurred a rise in physical and verbal attacks on Jews, participants in an international conference on anti-Semitism said Tuesday.

"In the last six weeks, we have seen an explosion of anti-Semitic activity and behavior -- which I would describe as a pandemic -- as a result of both the Gaza war and the economic crisis being blamed on Jews," Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, a U.S. civil rights group, said.

"Since World War Two we have not seen so many attacks on Jews, Jewish institutions, synagogues," he told Reuters during a London conference on anti-Semitism attended by 125 legislators from 40 countries.

British Foreign Office Minister Mark Malloch-Brown said there had been a sharp rise in anti-Semitic incidents in Britain and elsewhere in Europe after the Gaza campaign.

Several countries have reported an increase in anti-Semitism during Israel's 22-day offensive in Gaza which ended with a January 18 truce with Palestinian Islamist group Hamas.

France's main Jewish association CRIF recorded more than 100 attacks in January, up from 20 to 25 a month in the previous two years.

Some 250 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in Britain in the four weeks after fighting began in Gaza, compared with 541 incidents over the whole of last year, a charity that protects the Jewish community was reported last week as saying.

In Venezuela, armed men vandalized the Tiferet synagogue in January while Turkey's centuries-old Jewish community said it was alarmed by anti-Semitism that emerged during protests at Israel's Gaza assault.