New York City Council to Vote on Establishing End Jew Hatred Day
New York skyline and the Brooklyn Bridge, September 11, 2021. Photo: REUTERS/Mario Anzuoni
The New York City Council will vote this Thursday on a resolution establishing April 29 as “End Jew Hatred Day,” a Brooklyn councilwoman who proposed the measure told The Algemeiner on Wednesday.
“Thanks to my colleagues on Cultural Affairs my resolution to proclaim April 29 as End Jew Hatred Day passed committee and will go to a full vote on the floor on Thursday,” New York City Councilwoman Inna Vernikov said in a statement on Twitter. “Let’s work together to end Jew hatred.”
Additionally, during remarks in the City Council, Vernikov emphasized the imminent threat antisemitic violence presents to the city’s Jewish community and cited statistics showing that 94 percent of antisemitic hate crimes occur against Hasidic and Orthodox Jews, whom she described as “visibly Jewish.”
The campaign for “End Jew Hatred Day” is led by End Jew Hatred Movement, a grassroots nonprofit organization “centering on Jewish liberation from all forms oppression and discrimination,” according to its website.
On Wednesday, the group announced that resolutions establishing April 29 as End Jew Hatred Day passed legislatures in five cities, localities, and states across the country. State senators have introduced others in the state legislatures of Georgia and Michigan, and more by legislators in Philadelphia, Kentucky, and Arizona are forthcoming. Additionally, the student senate of University of California, Santa Barbara passed an End Jew Hatred Day resolution on April 19, Jewish Journal reported on Friday.
“#EndJewHatredDay is a day of empowerment for the Jewish people,” said Brooke Goldstein, co-founder of End Jew Hatred Movement, in a press statement. “We reflect on the strength of previous generations that were empowered to fight Jew-hatred, and we draw from past strength to ensure that the intergenerational trauma of the past shall never be repeated.”
Goldstein added that it will be a time for “setting aside political differences and commit to working together to achieve a future in which Jew-hatred is unacceptable in society as every other form of racism and bigotry.”
Antisemitic incidents in the United States increased 36 percent in 2022, according to an annual audit issued by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) in March.
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.
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
The post New York City Council to Vote on Establishing End Jew Hatred Day first appeared on Algemeiner.com.