Hate Files

In the JC (subscription required), Simon Rocker writes about a new report on anti-Semitic incidents recorded by police in London, U.K., over the past four years. The report says that most of the suspects in such incidents were white European men:

In more than 60 per cent of the cases where someone was charged, cautioned or the subject of other police proceedings, the offender was a neighbour, or sometimes a business associate, of the victim.

One in six incidents involved allegations of physical violence and one in six, threats or harassment.

The survey of a total of 1,296 incidents recorded by the Metropolitan Police from January 2001 to December 2004 is the result of a groundbreaking collaboration between the police and the Institute for Jewish Policy Research. It is the first time an outside body has been given access to the Met’s official statistics on anti-Semitism.

Their analysis shows that incidents often peaked in months of heightened tension in the Middle East. “These four years correspond with the second intifada, which not only marked an upsurge in violence against Jews in Israel but also an increase in attacks on Jews in a number of European countries,” according to the latest issue of the institute’s newsletter, JPR News, which reported some of the findings.

In a breakdown of suspects, 57 per cent were classified as white European; 15 per cent, Afro-Caribbean; 12 per cent, Indian-Pakistani; seven per cent, Arabic-Egyptian: six per cent, dark European; one per cent, Chinese/Japanese; and one per cent “unknown.”

The most common allegations involved threats or harassment, 26 per cent; criminal damage, 21 per cent; malicious communications, 17 per cent; and violence, 16 per cent; while in 13 per cent of cases, there was no criminal offence.

A further two per cent concerned robbery, with two per cent “sex-related.”

Nearly two thirds of incidents were carried out by men against men. Male victims proportionately suffered more violence, while women were more often the victims of malicious communications.

According to JPR, suspects generally fell into “younger age groups,” although most of those against whom the police took action were in the 41-60 bracket.

Victims were “fairly evenly distributed” across the age groups.

A third of the incidents were recorded in Barnet, “matching the proportion of London’s Jewish population that lives in the borough.”

Peak months — where reported incidents numbered 30 or more — tended to coincide with events “such as the aftermath of the terrorist attacks against the World Trade Centre and the Pentagon in September 2001, the violent conflict involving the Israel Defence Force in Jenin in April 2002, and the Iraq War in the spring of 2003,” according to JPR News.