Anti-Semitic incidents in US hit record high in 2019, report says
SILVER SPRING, Md. —
American Jews were targets of more anti-Semitic incidents in 2019 than any
other year over the past four decades, a surge marked by deadly attacks on a
California synagogue, a Jewish grocery store in New Jersey and a rabbi’s New
York home, the Anti-Defamation League reported Tuesday.
The Jewish civil rights group counted 2,107 anti-Semitic
incidents in 2019, finding 61 physical assault cases, 1,127 instances of
harassment and 919 acts of vandalism. That’s the highest annual tally since the
New York City-based group began tracking anti-Semitic incidents in 1979. It
also marked a 12% increase over the 1,879 incidents it counted in 2018.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s CEO, attributes last year’s
record high to a “normalization of anti-Semitic tropes,” the “charged politics
of the day” and social media. This year, he said, the COVID-19 pandemic is
fueling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
“Anti-Semitism is a virus. It is like a disease, and it
persists,” Greenblatt said. “It’s sometimes known as the oldest hatred. It
never seems to go away. There truly is no single antidote or cure.”
The ADL’s count of anti-Semitic assaults involved 95
victims. More than half of the assaults occurred in New York City, including 25
in Brooklyn. Eight of those Brooklyn assaults happened during a span of eight
days in December, primarily in neighborhoods where many Orthodox Jews live.
“Objects were thrown at victims, antisemitic slurs were
shouted, and at least three victims were hit or punched in their heads or
faces,” says the report first given exclusively to The Associated Press.
The ADL defines an anti-Semitic assault as “an attempt to
inflict physical harm on one or more people who are Jewish or perceived to be
Jewish, accompanied by evidence of antisemitic animus.” Three of those 2019
assaults were deadly.
A 20-year-old former nursing student, John T. Earnest,
awaits trial on charges he killed a woman and wounded three other people during
an attack on Chabad of Poway synagogue near San Diego in April 2019. The gunman
told a 911 dispatcher that he shot up the synagogue on the last day of Passover
because Jews were trying to “destroy all white people,” according to
prosecutors.
Attacks in Jersey City, New Jersey, killed a police
detective in a cemetery and three people at a kosher market in December.
Authorities said the attackers, David Anderson and Francine Graham, were
motivated by a hatred of Jewish people and law enforcement.
A 37-year-old man, Grafton Thomas, was charged with stabbing
five people with a machete at a Hanukkah celebration at a rabbi’s home in
Monsey, an Orthodox Jewish community north of New York City. One of the five
victims died three months after the Dec. 28 attack. Federal prosecutors said
Thomas had handwritten journals containing anti-Semitic comments and a
swastika.
The ADL’s report attributed 270 anti-Semitic incidents to
extremist groups or individuals. A separate ADL report, released in February,
found that 2019 was the sixth deadliest year for violence by all domestic
extremists since 1970.
The ADL counted 919 vandalism incidents in 2019, a 19%
increase from 774 incidents in 2018.
Two men described by authorities as members of a white
supremacist group called The Base were charged with conspiring last year to
vandalize synagogues, including Beth Israel Sinai Congregation in Racine,
Wisconsin. Even before his synagogue was defaced with swastikas, Rabbi Martyn
Adelberg sensed that anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. have been increasing as
extremist rhetoric migrates from the internet’s fringes to mainstream
platforms.
“It provokes something else, too: an undying outpouring of
love,” he said, noting that a crowd of 150 people — at least five times the
normal size and consisting mostly of gentiles — attended the first service at
the temple after the vandalism. “The support was overwhelming.”
The ADL says it helped authorities identify a suspect
accused of plastering white supremacist and anti-Semitic stickers on a display
case at Chabad Jewish Center in Ocean City, Maryland. Rabbi Noam Cohen, the
center’s director, said anti-Semitism has ebbed and flowed for centuries. He
views the vandalism of his center as an isolated incident, not a sign of
growing anti-Semitism.
“Maybe I’m naive, but I hope not,” he said.
The ADL tallied 1,127 harassment incidents last year, a 6%
increase over 2018. The group defined these incidents as cases in which at
least one Jewish person reported feeling harassed by the perceived anti-Semitic
words or actions of another person or group.
The ADL report doesn’t try to fully assess online
anti-Semitism, but it does include incidents in which individuals or groups
received anti-Semitic content in direct messages, on listservs or in social
media settings “where they would have the reasonable expectation to not be
subjected to anti-Semitism.”
The ADL counted 171 anti-Semitic incidents last year
referencing Israel or Zionism, including five instances in which members of a
white supremacist group, Patriot Front, protested outside Israel-aligned
organizations to oppose “Zionist influence” over the U.S. government.
“Although it is not antisemitic to protest Israeli policies,
these protests must be considered within the context of this group’s
well-documented antisemitic agenda,” the report says.
The ADL says it tries to avoid conflating general criticism
of Israel with anti-Semitism. “However, Israel-related harassment of groups or
individuals may be included when the harassment incorporates established
anti-Jewish references, accusations and/or conspiracy theories, or when they
demonize American Jews for their support of Israel,” the report says.
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