Why do you not think this is alarming? Of course it is alarming. On what do you base your standards? I will take a wild uninformed guess that you are not a Jew.

That preposterous statement means you either will not or cannot read. I have said explicitly and repeatedly that every incident deserves publicity, but that this particular headline is irresponsible specifically in its suggestion of something alarming going on. I have also said that the CST report concludes that the war in Gaza played an important role, so obviously one example of a headline backed by the actual data might be “CST: Anti-Semitic incidents increase in 2009, mainly due to Gaza”.

This actually looks very much like the typical antivax, ID, or religionite discussion. How ever much those trying to argue with rationality bend over backwards to accommodate the ideologues, try to meet their terms, and be nice, it’s never enough. Because they will not be satisfied until you subscribe to their particular tenet(s) of belief. In this case, it looks like until I accept the a priori premise that antisemitism is a substantial problem in the UK, you will still be “suspicious”. Well, too bad. Since you won’t or can’t justify your premises, nobody should be bullied by you to justify their skepticism about them.

Still, that was not my point. My point is that there is a reason that anti-homosexual acts are more likely, people do not want their children to see homosexuality and emulate them. British people are mainly Christian and there is not a risk that the children will witness jews and change their mind about their religion but there is a chance that impressionable young will change their attitude about shat is normal in sex.

therefore the anti semetic actions are becausethe jews are innocent, if misguided in religious terms.

Agreed. Which is exactly why I object to people pretty much unthinkingly granting any particular grievance an exceptional status that goes way beyond what can be justified with data and arguments. You will notice, for example, that you still haven’t produced either for your claim that antisemitism is indeed a “troublesome problem” in British society as a whole. (Which is what the headline suggests.)

You have also been unwilling to even acknowledge that a relative “jump this large” might well not be significant if the absolute numbers are very low. (Which was the explicit point behind the gay comparison, which you conveniently chose to ignore, I’m afraid, to push your silly “oppression olympics” point.)

Put another way, since we seem to agree on conclusions and (at least some important) arguments, we would have to disagree on our premises. I haven’t seen any data and/or arguments to suggest that antisemitism specifically is a troublesome problem in British society as a whole; you do seem to know of such data and/or arguments, but so far you haven’t shared them. If you want to move the discussion forward, that would seem the place to do it.

Much of the rest of what you said about my comments, though, I’m afraid, is not much more than reading your point of view into them, if you didn’t ignore them altogether. Repeatedly. If you’re not interested in discussing them fairly, then I’ll move on to more fertile ground.

You’ve presented combating homophobia as though it were a competing interest (thus, oppression olympics). It isn’t. Xenophobia can be addressed as a general issue, without requiring that the various groups affected by it compete for anyone’s attention.

Now, since we’re discussing mind-changing events, how prevalent would anti-Semitism have to be before you think a jump this large would merit a headline?