VDH worries, correctly, about some things that going wrong, very wrong, in Britain. He’s right to. As some folks (ahem) have been warning for years, the cumulative impact of Blair’s premiership has been disastrous not only for Britain, but for Britain’s ability to be an effective US ally. I also note that VDH refers to “rising anti-semitic incidents in Britain.” This is a remark that may refer back to something that Michael Ledeen posted back on the Corner (“British Antisemitism Redux”) over the weekend. Michael’s post quoted from a report in the Jerusalem Post. The section that Michael quoted ended as follows:

The report listed Britain, Australia, France, and Canada as the countries with the greatest rise in anti-Semitic attacks. Leading the list was Britain, which registered a 20-year record of 100 incidents – 60% more then in 1986. Of those incidents, 37% were considered violent.

Michael then concluded as follows: “Meanwhile, antisemitism in America is dropping. Not at Harvard and Chicago, of course, but still…”

Well, one anti-Semitic incident is an anti-Semitic incident too many, and I have no doubt that anti-Semitism among the UK’s Muslim communities is an increasing problem, but it’s misleading (in Michael’s case) to keep singling out the Brits. What that Jerusalem Post report says is that, according to one study, the British total of reported anti-Semitic incidents has increased by 60 percent over the last twenty years to reach a total of one hundred recorded in 2006. Who is doing the reporting and the classifying is unclear, as is their methodology and whether it has changed over time. Michael then went on to say that anti-Semitism in America is declining. He didn’t give a source, but a quick Google search produced this from the ADL. It does indeed show a decline in incidents in 2006, and it was also down in 2005. Welcome news indeed. What the same report does show, however, is that the total number of incidents in 2006 was over 1,500, or 15 times the UK level despite the fact that the US population is roughly five times Britain’s.

Now the methodology employed in the two surveys may be completely different, so we may well be comparing apples and oranges, but these findings are not without interest. It’s also not without interest to note how the trends within each survey compare with each other. The ADL appears to have reported roughly 900 incidents in the US in 1986, meaning that, according to its survey, the US has seen an increase of, wait for it, something over 60 percent in the number of reported incidents since 1986, much like Britain in fact.