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Antisemitic acts on rise in US, says new report

China Daily Global | Updated: 2023-03-24 11:09
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Antisemitic incidents in the US, including assault, vandalism and harassment, are on the rise and have hit record-high levels, according to a report released Thursday.

Incidents against Jewish people and people perceived to be Jewish increased by more than a third in just one year and reached nearly 3,700 cases in 2022, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a civil rights non-governmental organization. It was the most incidents since the ADL began recording them in 1979.

The ADL report, which includes information from victims and local community leaders as well as from police statistics, shows that in 2022, there was an increase across a range of hate-based incidents, from offensive comments to antisemitic slurs written on property, to physical attacks.

In 2022, there was a 69 percent increase in attacks against visibly identifiable Orthodox Jews. Acts of vandalism surged by 51 percent, and harassment rose by 29 percent.

"The brazenness of these attacks, sometimes in broad daylight, is a huge concern," Oren Segal, vice-president of the ADL Center on Extremism, told CNN. "The findings of our latest report quantify what a lot of people in the Jewish community have been feeling — that antisemitism seems to be popping up everywhere and often."

"Despite the rise of antisemitism, there is still a perception in many people's minds that Jews are not under threat, that they are successful and wealthy, and are not a targeted minority," Mark Weitzman, scholar of the history of antisemitism and chief operating officer at The World Jewish Restitution Organization, told CNN.

ADL records indicate that the number of anti-Jewish incidents (criminal and not) is more than three times higher countrywide than the FBI records of confirmed hate crimes show, and almost 1.5 times higher in New York City than what police records reveal.

A separate survey by the American Jewish Committee (AJC) published in February found that every fourth American Jewish adult, Orthodox or not, was targeted in an antisemitic incident ranging from physical attacks to remarks in person or online.

The AJC survey found that while both Jewish Americans and the general public see antisemitism as a problem, less than half of the general population think antisemitism has increased at least to some extent in the past five years, compared with about 4 in 5 Jewish Americans.

"While the American Jewish community is very aware of rising anti-Jewish sentiment, the general American public is not," said Robert Williams, a historian and executive director of the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education at the University of Southern California, who wasn't involved in the ADL report.

Agencies contributed to this story.

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