The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States last year was the highest since the Anti-Defamation League began tracking in 1979, the Jewish advocacy group announced Thursday.
In a new report, the ADL counted 3,697 incidents in the United States in 2022, a 36 percent increase from the previous year. A majority were characterized as harassment, including online, but the count also included 111 assaults and more than 1,200 vandalism incidents.
The report is the latest indication that anti-Semitism is on the rise in the United States. a trend reflected in American culture and politics, sending new waves of alarm through Jewish communities. It also reflects data collected by the federal government, as well as a separate academic study tracking incidents of bias against many religious groups.
Open anti-Jewish enmity has been expressed anti-Semitic pamphlets and graffiti, or brutal physical attacks, especially on visibly Orthodox Jews. But it can also be felt in harder-to-follow discourse online and in disturbing public rhetoric from celebrities like Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, who tweeted last fall that he was going “death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE”. And right-wing politicians and commentators have fueled fears of the ‘replacement theory’, the conspiracy idea that elites, sometimes manipulated by Jews, want to “replace” white Americans. The cumulative effect is an atmosphere in which threats, slander and conspiracy theories brew online, but are also increasingly visible offline.
“We’ve seen anti-Semitism normalized in ways that would have been unimaginable just a few years ago,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, the ADL’s general manager and national director. “When people see conspiracies behind every accident, it doesn’t take them long to look at the Jews and say they are the problem.”
Anti-Semitism in America
Anti-Semitism is one of the longest-standing forms of prejudice, and those who follow it say it is now on the rise across the country.
Incidents documented by the ADL include a white supremacist group using laser projectors to throw anti-Semitic messages on buildings in Florida, an individual shouting anti-Semitic obscenities at a Michigan synagogue’s kindergarten, and a gunman take several hostages in a synagogue in Texas. The report also includes some incidents characterized as anti-Zionist or anti-Israel. The ADL said it “does not confuse general criticism of Israel or anti-Israel activism with anti-Semitism.”
The report documents relatively few incidents of physical violence, although these too are on the rise. Among the 111 incidents is a case in which a Arizona professor Thomas Meixner, was murdered by a former student who, according to the ADL report, mistakenly believed he was Jewish.
It also records several incidents in Brooklyn where individuals fired BB guns at Jewish people, and one instance where a person shouted “Kanye 2024” before hitting a Jewish man in Manhattan and causing him to fall. The Manhattan case was one of 59 incidents last year where perpetrators directly referenced Ye after his anti-Semitic outbursts in October.
The report points to a sharp increase in incidents targeting schools and college campuses, attacks on Orthodox Jews and bomb threats against Jewish institutions.
This is the third time in the past five years that the ADL has declared its count a record high. Five states – New York, California, New Jersey, Florida and Texas – account for more than half of the total number of incidents.
“We are in a new era for anti-Semitism,” said Brian Levin, the director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, which monitors hate crimes in US cities. “We are now seeing Jews become a standard target.”
Mr. Levin’s organization, which is not affiliated with the ADL, released its own report on Tuesday revealing that religion-based hate crimes in select major U.S. cities rose 27 percent last year, with most incidents targeting Jews. Hate crimes against Jewish people made up 78 percent of religion-based crimes tracked by Mr. Levin’s organization, and the number increased by more than a quarter from the previous year.
The FBI’s latest hate crimes report also suggests an uptick. The bureau counted 817 anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2021, an increase from 2020, even though that was a year in which public transport and places of worship were closed for long periods.
Hate crimes in general increased by 12 percent in 2021, the agency reported. (The FBI’s count only looks at criminal offenses, not the broader range of non-criminal incidents tracked by the ADL)
In December, the Biden administration announced the creation of an interinstitutional task force to combat anti-Semitism, citing “the threat it poses to the Jewish community and all Americans.”