I don't see Eugenides' comment as quite the "gotcha" that you seem to. According to the cited figures, it is true that anti-Semitic incidents are unscionably high. It is also true that they have declined significantly over the last year. So where you put the emphasis is a matter of whether you're an optimist or pessimist, not the result of some objective calculation leading to an ineluctable result.

There's also the problem of defining an anti-Semitic incident. The CST has a definition on its website that is loose enough to allow the excessively thin-skinned or the ideologically paranoid to count as an anti-Semitic incident what I might see as, e.g., anti-Zionism. A friend of mine was scolded by a colleague, a university professor, for wearing a pin referring to the murder of Rachel Corrie. This item she regarded as an affront to Jews (the pin said something like "Remember Rachel" or something equally sober.)

Now reasonable people may disagree about Corrie's actions (although not reasonable people who are also informed-she was a hero). But this pin being an indicator of anti-Semitism? Sadly, I don't think this kind of semantic elasticity is rare when it comes to the notion of anti-Semitism, so I think it's wise to take the CST's numbers with that in mind.

By the way, I think the second sentence of your second paragraph should read, "This is Greenstein....", not, "This is Littlejohn...".