If you take the long view it is plain to see that the number of anti-Semitic acts in the world is much less than, say, 1944. Don’t you feel better now?

The overall number of violent antisemitic events monitored worldwide in 2005 was significantly lower than in 2004 (406 compared to 501). Nevertheless, this was the second highest level recorded since 1989. … In contrast, verbal and written attacks of all kinds—including caricatures, slander, boycotts, accusations, the identification of Jews with Israelis and the comparison of Israelis to Nazis—proliferated. Though uncountable, such expressions, emanating especially from intellectual and academic circles (in the UK Russia, Ukraine and Canada) and from heads of state and politicians (in Iran and Venezuela), appear to have increased. Most troubling is the notion that Israel—and sometimes the Jewish people as a whole—should not exist.

So antisemitism is up, but violent incidents declined in 2005. This is mostly from a halving of violent incidents in France between 04 and 05; incidents in other European countries, notably the UK, continued to increase.

Will never happen. The leagues are all bark, no bite.

(Which always had me thinking that they really needed to recalibrate the scale.)

But whenever Israel is attacked and defends herself, anti-Semitism goes up. I suppose the truly frightening corollary would be that if Iran does manage to drop a bomb on Israel, anti-Semitism will go down worldwide.

Israel still exists, does it not? Jews still exist, do we not? The upward trend will continue while those two facts are true.

Are you saying that anti-Semitism will always be on an upward trend while Jews exist? That’s a bit hopeless, isn’t it? And not quite true, either. There will always be anti-Semtism while Jews exist, but the rates have gone down as well as up throughout history.