The number of severe racially-motivated acts of violence against Jews around the world tripled in 2007, according to a report published Wednesday by Tel Aviv University's Stephen Roth Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism and Racism.
The study marked a 6.6 percent rise in all acts of anti-Semitism around the world last year, reported Israel's Ynet news portal.
And the 632 attacks - 57 percent of them classified as "major attacks" - that were reported in 2007 may represent only a small percentage of all acts of anti-Semitism that actually occurred, most of which were likely to have gone unreported.
Germany, Canada and Britain led Western nations where the number of anti-Semitic assaults increased in 2007. France saw a 50 percent decrease in acts of anti-Semitism over the last year.
The global upward anti-Semitic trend has been brushed off by many, including a worrying number of Jewish leaders and organizations. Experts warn that a similar attitude prevailed in the run-up to the Nazi Holocaust.
In related news, the Simon Wiesenthal Institute on Wednesday published a list of the top 10 Nazi war criminals still at large.
Topping the list is 93-year-old Dr. Aribert Heim who was indicted in Germany on charges of murdering hundreds of Jewish inmates at the Mauthausen concentration camp during World War II.
Heim disappeared in 1962 just before his planned prosecution, and his whereabouts have been unknown ever since.
Most of the men on the list continue to reside as free men in Germany, Austria and Hungary.