"Those are the ones where we’re getting the reports we get of anti-Semitic violence, and are showing the highest numbers," Srulevitch said of reports from the UK and France on incidents of violence against Jews.
However, Srulevitch noted the ADL has not received reports on incidents from “the majority” of European Union member states.
"It also stands to reason, where you have the largest Jewish communities, you’re probably also going to have the largest numbers [of incidents] there," he said.
Srulevitch added that the United States, with the largest Jewish population globally, has not experienced the kinds of anti-Semitism as countries in Western Europe do.
In a Monday Johns Hopkins University conference on the challenges of democracy in Europe, Srulevitch cited troubling figures showing the rise in violent incidents against Jews.
"The larger concern in France is the rise in violent incidents which are at an all-time high according to the French [Jewish] Security Agency the SPJ," Srulevitch explained.
Between 2008 and 2014, the number of assaults against Jews in France totaled approximately 77 annually. "French Jews were attacked at a rate forty times what happens to the Jewish population here in the US," he explained.
In Great Britain, where the index measuring the population’s anti-Semitic sentiment is extremely low, the number of anti-Semitic incidents "set a record" of 1,100 in 2014, of which 88 were violent attacks, Srulevitch added.
All of the statistics cited were obtained prior to the Israel-Gaza war in the summer 2014.
According to national statistics, France’s half million Jewish population is the largest in Europe, followed by 300,000 in the United Kingdom.
