SILVER SPRING, Maryland (AP) — American Jews were targets of more anti-Semitic incidents in 2019 than any other year over the past four decades, …
SILVER SPRING, Maryland (AP) — American Jews were targets of more anti-Semitic incidents in 2019 than any other year over the past four decades, a surge marked by deadly attacks on a California synagogue, a Jewish grocery store in New Jersey and a rabbi’s New York home, the Anti-Defamation League reported Tuesday.
The Jewish civil rights group counted 2,107 anti-Semitic incidents in 2019, finding 61 physical assault cases,1,127 instances of harassment and 919 acts of vandalism. That’s the highest annual tally since the New York City-based group began tracking anti-Semitic incidents in 1979. It also marked a 12% increase over the 1,879 incidents it counted in 2018.
Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s CEO, attributes last year’s record high to a « normalization of anti-Semitic tropes, » the « charged politics of the day » and social media. This year, he said, the COVID-19 pandemic is fueling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.
« Anti-Semitism is a virus. It is like a disease, and it persists, » Greenblatt said. « It’s sometimes known as the oldest hatred. It never seems to go away. There truly is no single antidote or cure. »
The ADL’s count of anti-Semitic assaults involved 95 victims. More than half of the assaults occurred in New York City, including 25 in Brooklyn. Eight of those Brooklyn assaults happened during a span of eight days in December, primarily in neighborhoods where many Orthodox Jews live.
« Objects were thrown at victims, antisemitic slurs were shouted, and at least three victims were hit or punched in their heads or faces, » says the report first given exclusively to The Associated Press.
The ADL defines an anti-Semitic assault as « an attempt to inflict physical harm on one or more people who are Jewish or perceived to be Jewish, accompanied by evidence of antisemitic animus.
