Photo: Hate crime. Photo courtesy of Casimiro PT/Shutterstock.
(JNS)
The Anti-Defamation League(ADL) has released a new report documenting a sizable increase this month in crimes and protests targeting Jews.
“Preliminary data from ADL Center on Extremism indicates that reported incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault increased by 388 percent over the same period last year,” the organization said before laying out the numbers.
From Oct. 7-23, 2022, the ADL found 64 incidents with four related to Israel. This year during the same period, the figures ballooned to 312 incidents with 190 related directly to the current conflict between Israel and Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
A map of the incidents shows clusters in various states and regions. In California, the San Francisco Bay Area and Los Angeles featured high levels of anti-Israel rallies, some with support for terrorism. Numerous protests also took place around Detroit, near the state’s 12th District represented by Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.).
High levels of anti-Israel protests—some with overt advocacy for Hamas and outright hatred towards Jews—also took place in New England, New York, Pennsylvania and Maryland, which was marked by anti-Jewish and anti-Israel vandalism and harassment. Indiana and Ohio saw six and eight protests, respectively.
The ADL also identified a total of five acts of anti-Semitic assaults in California, Texas, Michigan, New York and New Jersey.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s CEO and national director, said that, “when conflict erupts in Israel, anti-Semitic incidents soon follow in the U.S. and globally … we are witnessing a disturbing rise in anti-Semitic activity here while the war rages overseas.”
