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The international community must establish a framework for collaboration on tracking and preventing anti-Semitism throughout the world, according to a new report.

The Spring 2009 issue of the Jewish Political Studies Review includes a report on methods used to track anti-Semitic incidents in Europe titled "Devising Unified Criteria and Methods of Monitoring Anti-Semitism." Written by Michael Whine, a consultant on anti-Semitism to the European Jewish Congress and a representative of the EJC at the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), the report identifies which European countries are most effective at identifying and following up on anti-Semitic incidents, which of their methods work, and what needs to be done to create a comprehensive system that discovers as many anti-Semitic incidents in Europe as possible.

The Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and the European Union were forced to focus their attention on anti-Semitism during the late 1990s following a sharp upswing in incidents, Whine writes. While the two fronts united because they recognized anti-Semitism's widespread danger, Whine wrote that their efforts became detrimental because of a lack of legislation defining violent hate crimes as an aggravating factor or a separate offense, the failure to record and classify the hate element of crimes, under-reporting of hate crimes that are frequently not reported to police, the lack of funds or expertise to established a monitoring system, the lack of disaggregated data, and the lack of a central focal point for data collection, let alone a comprehensive data collection system.

"Jewish defense and advocacy organizations can therefore no longer rely on simply publicizing details of anti-Semitic incidents, as in the past, in order to galvanize criminal justice agencies to take action," Whine wrote. "The rise in racist violence In Europe, particularly the increase in anti-Semitism, requires those Jewish organizations that monitor anti-Semitism to adopt unified criteria and methodology for measurement and analysis if they are to effectively educate their communities."

One major roadblock is the ever-blurring line between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. In some instances, legitimate criticism of the state of Israel is taken as anti-Semitism; in others, anti-Zionism is used as a veil to cover true anti-Semitism, according to the report.

"Put simply, the definition must be understood by a policeman on patrol, who can use it as the basis for determining if a racist criminal act has anti-Jewish motivation," Whine writes as a possible solution to the problem. "He must be able to differentiate between legitimate criticism of the State of Israel's actions and anti-Zionism used as a cloak for anti-Semitism."

Another problem with the reporting of anti-Semitic incidents is consistency and participation from all member nations of the European Union. According to the last report published by The European Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA), only 11 of the 47 members of the Council of Europe collect sufficient data on racist crime to even conduct any sort of trend analysis: Austria; the Czech Republic; Denmark; Finland; France; Germany; Ireland; Poland; Slovakia; Sweden; and the United Kingdom. Eight of these nations experienced a general increase in recorded racist crime, and only four countries -- France, Germany, Sweden, and the United Kingdom -- had sufficient data on anti-Semitic crime to conduct any sort of analysis.

"For some, the reason is a lack of capacity, or training," Whine explains about the overwhelming majority of countries that could not provide workable statistics. "For others, it is because they have not yet amended their penal codes to allow the collection of such data. For yet others, the data collected remains within the category of 'restricted,' often gathered by internal security and intelligence agencies as part of their surveillance of extremist political activity and therefore not published."

Another major problem Whine discusses is the miscommunication between two separate data collection agencies, the OSCE Office for Democratic Institutions and Human Rights (ODIHR) and the FRA's report.

"The FRA and ODIHR work from essentially the same data, and both also encourage sources beyond official providers of data, such as specialized NGOs and recognized victim groups," Whine wrote.

Both organizations criticize the lack of a formal structure for collecting data outside of an official definition of anti-Semitism and scolds how private reports on anti-Semitism remain. However, it's the outside groups that provide additional data and perspective that change the reports the two organizations produce.

"In the absence of such data, it is impossible to determine the frequency with which hate crimes occur [in Europe]," Whine writes. "ODIHR cites the FRA reports to emphasize that only the previously mentioned states provide any data capable of analyzing trends."

Whine writes in his report that non-governmental organizations (NGOs) also need to conform to the same reporting standards as government bodies. While their jobs to monitor may be sufficient, Whine writes, they assume that the police constitute the first response to hate crimes, which does not work if the police do not know what to look out for in the first place.

At the end of his report, Whine notes that the United Kingdom has the closest to an ideal system of monitoring, reporting, and analyzing anti-Semitic incidents.

"Since April 2008, all UK police forces are bound to report all hate incidents and crimes, disaggregated by major faith group," Whine writes. "Thus, official reporting of anti-Semitic incidents will at last become truly accurate... it will become theoretically possible to monitor anti-Semitic crime, prosecutions, and judicial outcomes in the first consistent national 'joined up' system."

Whine concludes that there are three major necessities in order to establish a truly successful and uniform hate crime monitoring program across Europe: objectivity, to not overemphasize possible anti-Semitic incidents nor underscore the severity of an event; creating a methodology that is followed by all states; and governments incorporating the information provided to them by NGOs, providing that they follow the same standards that the governments do.