E/CN.4/2001/21 page 17 shares a solemn responsibility to fight those evils”. In March 2000, Pope John-Paul II made a historic pilgrimage to Israel, during which he declared that the Catholic Church “was deeply troubled by anti-Semitism and racism and was determined to denounce those evils and struggle against them”. Moreover, Britain’s High Court has ruled against British author David Irving in his suit against the American historian Deborah Lipstadt and her publisher, thus repudiating attempts to distort the historiography of the Holocaust. 35. Yet, while these events seemed to promise that the new century would be a great improvement on the previous one in regard to anti-Semitism, an examination of the past decade indicates some troubling trends and there has been a steady increase in anti-Semitic acts (300 incidents in 1994). Despite the continuing decline since then, the number of violent anti-Semitic acts in 1999 was still 100 per cent higher than in 1989. “The level of anti-Semitic activities worldwide in 1999 was similar to that of 1998: 32 major attacks (involving the use of a weapon or explosive) compared to 36 in 1998, and 114 major violent incidents (unarmed attacks on individuals and severe damage to private and communal property) compared to 121 in 1988. Many hundreds more minor incidents, such as graffiti, slogans, personal insults and harassment, were recorded by Jewish communities and individuals worldwide, but were not numerically compared … in order to avoid distortion of the overall picture, since well-organized Jewish communities have a better monitoring network than less well-organized ones. Also, the identity of the perpetrators, whether hooligans, criminals or ideologically-motivated zealots, is not easily discovered. This multitude of cases, coupled with almost innumerable verbal, electronic and visual anti-Jewish expressions, and frequent debates related to the Jewish people in politics and in the media, continued to exacerbate the situation in 1999.” 36. Several recent developments should be noted. One of the most significant was the shift in focus from extremist Muslim anti-Jewish terrorism to violence committed and endorsed by extreme right-wingers holding classic anti-Semitic views. The growing tendency towards ultra-right wing terrorism was evident especially in the United States where, despite a 4 per cent decline in incidents, the summer of 1999 witnessed some of the worst anti-Semitic attacks ever recorded. These included arson attacks on synagogues and a gun attack on a Jewish kindergarten. A similar trend was noted in Russia, where ongoing political anti-Semitism, stemming partly from the weakness in the political system and its failure to enforce existing laws, may have influenced the shift from vandalism to violence, including bombs, arson attacks and an assassination attempt. Consequently, it should be noted that Russian Jews suffered more from anti-Semitic acts and expressions than the communities in Ukraine, Belarus or the Baltic republics. The link between aggressive ideology and propaganda of rightist circles and actual violence was evident in both Russia and the United States. The report by Tel-Aviv University mentions the emergence in Europe (Austria, Germany, Switzerland) of far-right, anti-Semitic parties, a tendency which has been noted elsewhere in this document. A 14 per cent increase in anti-Semitic acts was reported in the United Kingdom, as in Scandinavia (in Sweden, several terrorist attacks were committed by pro-Nazi and anti-Semitic organizations). In Australia, the report notes a decrease in anti-Semitic incidents, although the figure is still 11 per cent higher than the average over the previous nine years. While Canada shows an 11 per cent increase, South Africa and Latin America were relatively quiet in 1999.