The coronavirus pandemic is fueling a worldwide rise in anti-Semitism, according to an Israeli group that monitors the subject.
The report, released Monday by the Kantor Center at Tel Aviv University, studied incidents of anti-Semitism from 2019 and early 2020. At its presentation, Moshe Kantor, president of the European Jewish Congress, said that there was an 18% rise in anti-Semitic incidents last year, and the spread of the coronavirus is only aiding the increase in 2020.
“Since the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been a significant rise in accusations that Jews, as individuals and as a collective, are behind the spread of the virus or are directly profiting from it,” Kantor said. “The language and imagery used clearly identifies a revival of the medieval ‘blood libels’ when Jews were accused of spreading disease, poisoning wells, or controlling economies.”
Kantor said that in addition to addressing health and economic issues, government leaders need to make sure that the pandemic does not become an occasion for the spread of conspiracy theories and scapegoating.
“As unemployment numbers will begin to spiral out of control, more people may seek out scapegoats, spun for them by conspiracy theorists,” Kantor said. “Our leaders need to address the problem of growing extremism and hate now to get ahead of the problem that is already at our door.”
The report found that in 2019, there were 465 recorded violent anti-Semitic occurrences, up from 387 in 2018. In the United States, the issue has been a problem in New York City especially, with more than 500 anti-Semitic hate crimes reported since the city started collecting data in 2017.
