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Report: Global Rise In Anti-Semitic Attacks

Report: Global Rise In Anti-Semitic Attacks

Violent anti-Semitic attacks have risen by 38% over the past year with figures from France and Britain being particularly disturbing, says a study from an Israeli university.

The study from Tel Aviv University was published as Israel marked Holocaust Memorial Day 70 years after the liberation of the Nazi death camps.

The report found 766 violent attacks, including "arson, vandalism or direct threats against Jewish persons or institutions" across the world, making 2014 the second-worst year of the decade, after 2009.

The highest number of incidents in a single country happened in France which, at around 600,000, is home to Europe's largest Jewish community.

It recorded 164 anti-Semitic attacks in 2014 compared with 141 the previous year.

Britain saw 141 attacks for the same year, up from 95 in 2013, while Germany recorded 76, more than double the figure for 2013, figures in the annual report revealed.

The study said: "The overall feeling among many Jewish people is one of living in an intensifying anti-Jewish environment that has become not only insulting and threatening, but outright dangerous, and that they are facing an explosion of hatred towards them as individuals, their communities, and Israel, as a Jewish state."

The report considered one of the contributing factors to the increased attacks was last summer's war in Gaza which led to protests across Europe.

Across Israel, people came to a standstill to observe a two-minute silence to remember the estimated six millions Jews murdered during the Holocaust by the Nazi regime, between 1933 and 1945.

As sirens sounded, cars and buses pulled over. Drivers stepped out of their vehicles and people bowed their heads in one of Israel's most solemn annual reminders of the Shoah, while television and radio stations broadcast programmes about the genocide.

Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu laid a wreath at the Yad Vashem Holocaust memorial.

The names of some of those murdered were being read out at the Knesset, the Israeli parliament.

Around the country some of those who survived the Holocaust were visiting homes to talk to informal groups about their experiences.