Belgium registered a sharp increase in the number of reported anti-Semitic offences in 2012, according to the governmental agency Centre for Equal Opportunities and Fight Against Racism.
Edouard Delruelle, who heads the center, mentioned an ibcrease of 30% with his organisation having received 88 complaints of anti-Semitism last year, compared to 62 in 2011 and 57 the year before that.
“The Jewish community is right to be concerned,” Delruelle told Belgian daily La Dernière Heure.
“The figures show that anti-Semitism persists in Belgium. These figures are merely indicative, the tip of the iceberg, because many victims do not report.”
The figures for 2012 include 11 cases of vandalism, 15 verbal assaults on the street, 13 Holocaust denials and 28 insults made online.
Other attacks included intimidation and harassment.
Delruelle said the figures were consistent with the 58% rise in anti-Semitic incidents in France reported by the French Jewish community security service SPCJ released last week. The French report said 614 incidents were recorded in 2012 compared to the previous year’s figure of 389.
Amongst the highest-profile of these incidents, the French Jewish community was subjected to two attacks in less than 6 months, including that perpetrated by radical Islamist Mohammed Merah on the Ozar Hatorah school in Toulouse which resulted in the deaths of four Jews – three children and a schoolteacher, as well as that on a Jewish shop in the Parisian suburb of Sarcelles.
In January, a report on anti-Semitic trends presented by Israeli Information and Diaspora Minister Yuli Edelstein showed that verbal and physical attacks against Jews are on the rise and most pronounced in Western Europe,
The report indicated a rise in terror acts and attempted terror attacks against Jewish targets, particularly by those associated with extremist Islamist movements or the radical Right.