Antisemitic Incidents in US Hit Record High in 2022, Anti-Defamation League Says

Antisemitic incidents in the United States increased 36 percent in 2022, according to an annual audit issued by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) on Thursday.

The ADL recorded 3,697 incidents — ten per day — across the US, the highest ever since the group began track them in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all spiked by double digits and occurred most frequently in New York, California, New Jersey, Florida, and Texas, which accounted for 54 percent of the ADL’s data. New York had the most, with 580 incidents. One incident resulted in a fatality.

Acts of hate targeting Jewish institutions and synagogue also occurred at high rates, with 589 incidents, including a hostage situation at synagogue in Colleyville, Texas, and 91 bomb threats, the most recorded since 2017. Four hundred-and-ninety-four incidents took place on K-12 campuses, and two-hundred-and-nineteen incidents took place at colleges and universities, an increase of 41 percent from the previous year.

“We’re deeply disturbed by this dramatic and completely unacceptable surge in antisemitic incidents,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement addressing the group’s findings. “While we can’t point to any single factor or ideology driving this increase, the surges in organized white supremacist propaganda activity, brazen attacks on Orthodox Jews, a rapid escalation of bomb threats toward Jewish institutions and significant increases of incidents in schools and on college campuses all contributed to the unusually high number.”

In one incident at University of Wisconsin-Madison, an individual chalked on a campus sidewalk messages accusing Jewish students of being “racist,” “genocidal,” and “having blood on their hands,” and in March, three antisemitic incidents occurred at the university, including the the carving of a swastika into a bathroom stall, and the harassment of a student who was targeted for “looking Jewish.”

In Feb. 2022, third-year student Cassandra Blotner was expelled from a sexual assault group she founded after sharing a pro-Israel post on social media. Blotner later said that sharing her story exposed her to cyberbullying and threats on an anonymous social media platform. At University of Cincinnati, a menorah on the lawn of the Chabad Jewish center was vandalized for the fourth time in several years.

Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP), a network of groups comprising college students, was the group responsible for numerous cases of anti-Zionism in higher education, the ADL added. White supremacist groups also engaged in anti-Zionist activity, distributing propaganda portraying Israel as the cornerstone of a conspiracy to achieve Jewish control and domination of world politics, a trope trafficked by Kanye West during several rants near the end of the year.

Greenblatt explained that individuals and groups across the political and ideological spectrum have contributed to rising discrimination against the Jewish community.

In New York City, assaults on Orthodox Jews were especially egregious, and, according to a separate report released by Americans Against Antisemitism, represented an overwhelming majority of all antisemitic assaults in the area.

In October, a yeshiva student was pelted with eggs and forced to say “Free Palestine.” The attack took place on the corner of Avenue M and East 18th St, the location of another antisemitic outrage in May, when a Yeshiva student was assaulted by five people who similarly yelled “Free Palestine.” That same month, a 17-year-old resident of Crown Heights, whose identity remains undisclosed, struck two young, Orthodox Jewish men before taking off on an electric Citi Bike. In December, aJewish man and his son were shot with BB guns on Sunday while standing outside a kosher supermarket in the Staten Island borough of New York City.

Kanye West was invoked in assault on a 63-year-old man at Central Park, with the assailant shouting “Kanye 2024.”

“In a year when antisemitism found mainstream acceptance like never before, antisemites were emboldened to act on their animus,” Oren Segal, vice president of the ADL’s Center on Extremism said. “From the antisemitic ‘Great Replacement’ theory to Ye’s claims about Jewish power, these conspiracies fueled real-world incidents of hate.”

Hate crimes against the Jewish community and rising antisemitism have raised concerns that the American Jewish is less secure today than in previous eras. One in four American Jews, according to another survey conducted by the American Jewish Committee, believe their status in the US is less secure. Eighty percent feel that antisemitism has increased and half said it does not attract as much attention as other forms of discrimination.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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