International Holocaust Remembrance Day

There were 1,606 hate crime offenses motivated by religious bias in 2008.

A breakdown of these offenses shows:

65.7 percent were anti-Jewish.

13.2 percent were anti-other religion.

7.7 percent were anti-Islamic.

4.7 percent were anti-Catholic.

4.2 percent were anti-multiple religions, group.

3.7 percent were anti-Protestant.

0.9 percent were anti-Atheism/Agnosticism/etc.

Additionally, the agency data noted that election campaigns in Ukraine and Hungary gave way to public displays of anti-Semitism, which surfaced as tools for the competing political parties. In Ukraine, a story surfaced during that country'selection campaign that Israel had brought 25,000 Ukrainian children to the Jewish state for the sole purpose of harvesting their organs.

(Natan) Sharansky (of the Jewish Agency)  also pointed to the Ukrainian story as evidence of the blood libel's return, along with an incident last week, in which an American man posted a video on Youtube accusing the IDF of harvesting organs from Haitian survivors of that country's catastrophic earthquake. The IDF has been in Haiti since the quake struck nearly two weeks ago, providing much-needed medical assistance to survivors.

The report went on to list Iran and Venezuela as the world's most anti-Semitic countries, and warned of the strengthening ties between extreme left-wing activists and Islamists, as well as more tolerance shown to Muslim acts of hate against Jews.

"There is an evil that can spread and threaten the security of Jews. We know that this just begins with Jews, and then continues on to the rest of the world."