WASHINGTON – The number of anti-Semitic incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment in the US hit a record high in 2023 as anti-Jewish sentiment spiked after the start of the Israel-Hamas war, according to a report released on April 16.
The Jewish advocacy group Anti-Defamation League (ADL) tallied 8,873 anti-Semitic incidents in 2023, a 140 per cent increase over 2022 and a record high since the group began keeping records in 1979, the report said.
Over 5,200 incidents were reported after Oct 7, 2023, the day the Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing some 1,200 people and taking more than 250 hostage. Israel responded by launching a counter-attack in the Gaza Strip that has killed some 32,000 Palestinians and reduced much of the Hamas-run enclave to rubble.
“Jewish-Americans are being targeted for who they are at school, at work, on the street, in Jewish institutions and even at home. This crisis demands immediate action from every sector of society and every state in the union,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.
Reported discrimination and attacks against Muslims and Palestinians also reached a record high in the US in 2023, according to a Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) report released earlier in April.
Complaints totalled 8,061 in 2023, a 56 per cent rise from the year before and the highest since CAIR began tracking nearly 30 years ago. About 3,600 of those incidents occurred from October to December.
Tensions between pro-Israel and pro-Palestinian demonstrators have reached a fever pitch in the US as the Gaza war rages on, particularly on college campuses.
The ADL recorded 732 campus-based incidents between Oct 7 and the end of 2023, compared with just 63 incidents in the same period in 2022.
The ADL tallies cases reported directly to the organisation and also scans media reports, law enforcement records and cases recorded by other Jewish organisations.
The 2023 incidents included vandalism of Jewish student centres and synagogues, bomb threats and chants at demonstrations that call for the death of Jews and the destruction of Israel. REUTERS
