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February 27, 2004/Adar 5 5764, Vol. 56, No. 23
Anti-Semitic incidents up in Britain
RICHARD ALLEN GREENE
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
LONDON - Turmoil in the Middle East is behind the high number of anti-Semitic incidents in Britain, a monitoring group said.
There were 375 anti-Semitic incidents in Britain last year, the second highest number in two decades, according to the Community Security Trust, which monitors such incidents on behalf of U.K. Jewry.
The incidents ranged from attacks on rabbis and university students to abusive e-mail directed at pro-Israel lawmakers and graffiti on the home of Israeli-born psychic Uri Geller.
The home of David Triesman, a former general secretary of Britain's Labor Party, was attacked by the neo-Nazi group Combat 18 so regularly that police advised him to build a 10-foot-high fence around his home, London's Daily Tele-graph newspaper reported.
But the local council ordered him to take the fence down because it violated planning guidelines.
Triesman had his windows broken and swastikas painted on his walls a dozen times in 14 months.
The monitoring group said there is a clear link between anti-Semitic incidents and Middle East events - even when Israel is not directly involved.
In March 2003, the month the Iraq war began, the trust recorded 48 anti-Semitic incidents.
That was more than twice the average number of incidents in March during the preceding seven years. The vast majority took place after the summit between President Bush and British Prime Minister Tony Blair in the Azores Islands, when it became clear that war was inevitable.
An even higher number of incidents, 57, was recorded in October, the month of the Maxim cafe suicide bombing in Haifa and Israel's subsequent bombing of a terrorist training camp in Syria.
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