US Antisemitic Incidents Surge to Record High

Reports of antisemitic incidents in the US have reached a record high since last year's Hamas attack in Israel, according to a preliminary report from the Anti-Defamation League Center for Extremism (ADL). The group found over10,000 incidents from 7 October 2023 to 24 September of this year, more than a 200% increase compared to the same period last year. It is the highest ever since the ADL began tracking such incidents in 1979.

The report is days after the FBI and Department of Homeland Security issued a joint statement warning of possible violent threats amid the ongoing turmoil in the Middle East. Since last October’s Hamas attack on Israel which saw around 1,200 people killed "Jewish Americans haven’t had a single moment of respite,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement. “Instead, we’ve faced a shocking number of antisemitic threats and experienced calls for more violence against Israelis and Jews everywhere.”

The antisemitism episodes reported by the ADL included about 8,015 incidents of verbal or written harassment, 1,840 incidents of vandalism, and 150 incidents of physical assault. The states with the highest number of recorded cases were California, with 1,266 incidents, New York 1,218, New Jersey  830, and Florida 463. The ADL expects its preliminary numbers to increase as it receives more data. The final report for 2024 will be published in the spring of 2025.

Part of the overall increase comes from a change in methodology to include "expressions of opposition to Zionism, as well as support for resistance against Israel or Zionists that could be perceived as supporting terrorism", the ADL said. The ADL's preliminary report counted over 3,000 of incidents during anti-Israel rallies "which featured regular explicit expressions of support for terrorist groups", including Hamas and Hezbollah. Excluding these incidents, the ADL counted 7,523 episodes of antisemitism, a 103% increase from 2022.

The continued violence in the Middle East region has led to a surge in anti-Muslim and Islamophobic incidents across the US. Anti-Muslim incidents were 8,061 in 2023, according to a report from the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) released this April. This was the highest level since CAIR began tallying almost 30 years ago, with nearly half coming after the 7 October attack.

Read the October 6, 2024 BBC News article.

CAIR-Massachusetts Releases New Report Documenting 1,000+ Calls for Civil Rights Assistance Since 2016

In its just-released 2021 civil rights report, Protecting Our Community: 2021 Civil Rights Report, the Massachusetts chapter of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR-MA), the nation’s largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization, found that there were more than 1,000 calls to CAIR-MA for assistance from members of the Muslim community since 2016. In that year, its legal department began operations. 

CAIR-MA received 163 requests for legal assistance in 2021, a slight decrease from the 240 average of previous years. The report stated that when schools returned to in-person classes after COVID shutdowns, calls to CAIR-MA complaining about aggressive, sometimes violent, bullying of Muslims students increased significantly. In general though, assistance calls about hate crimes have continued to decrease annually, from 28 in 2017 to just nine in 2021.   

CAIR-MA Legal Director Barbara J. Dougan, Esq. commented: 

“In 2021, our chapter’s legal department received over a thousand complaints since its establishment in 2016. This is bittersweet because although we are eager to be a champion for Massachusetts Muslims when they need us, we are driven by the fact that too many people need help to secure the basic human right of freedom of religion. Massachusetts has good laws on the books.  Our state officials must be committed to enforcing them.” 

CAIR-MA prioritizes providing help in hate crimes and harassment, bullying, education discrimination, employment discrimination, FBI and police harassment, housing discrimination, prisoners’ religious freedoms, public accommodations, and travel abuses. For immigration, family law, and criminal defense, they refer callers to other lawyers or legal groups, state or federal agencies, and non-legal service providers. 

Regarding housing discrimination, CAIR-MA in 2019 filed a case with the Massachusetts Commission Against Discrimination (MCAD) against a man whose religiously-based harassment forced a Muslim family from their apartment. He maliciously reported the family to the police, falsely accusing them of poisoning his dog (saying “Muslims hate dogs”), and filed an unsuccessful court care against them. In one action, he claimed that the Muslim family was monitoring his movements inside his apartment and that they wanted his large dog to bite their young children. In 2020, MCAD issued a “probable cause” finding in the family's favor leading to a 2021 settlement. The former neighbor had to pay the family for their moving expenses and emotional distress, watch a documentary on Islam, and then report about five things he had learned from the film.

CAIR’s mission is "to enhance the understanding of Islam, encourage dialogue, protect civil liberties, empower American Muslims, and build coalitions that promote justice and mutual understanding."

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Source: https://www.cair.com/press_releases/cair-massachusetts-releases-new-report-documenting-1000-calls-for-civil-rights-assistance-since-2016/, May 11, 2022.