Media coverage of deadly anti-Semitic attacks in Poway, California; Jersey City, New Jersey; and Monsey, New York, demonstrated that 2019 was a devastating year for American Jews. The Anti-Defamation League’s 2019 audit of incidents of anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism, and assault, released on Tuesday, proves that these were far from isolated expressions of intolerance.
In what ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt referred to as a “rising tide of hate,” the ADL recorded 2,107 incidents of anti-Semitism in the United States throughout 2019. This represents not only a 12% increase in anti-Semitic incidents compared with 2018, but it marks the highest number of anti-Semitic incidents the ADL has recorded since it began collecting such data in 1979.
Among the audit’s most alarming findings is a 56% increase in assaults, with 61 incidents reported in 2019. More than half of these assaults occurred in the five boroughs of New York City, which drew national attention after a five-day spate of eight assaults during the Jewish celebration of Hanukkah in December. Speaking to the press on May 12, Greenblatt expressed dismay that New York City, which “has the largest Jewish population of any city on the planet … was the place where Jews were, unfortunately, most victimized.”
The annual ADL audit found that incidents of anti-Semitism occurred in each of the 48 contiguous states and the District of Columbia. (State-specific findings for current and previous years can be found using the ADL’s H.E.A.T. map.) Incidents were reported in public spaces, at non-Jewish schools and houses of worship, in businesses, in homes, at colleges and universities, in Jewish institutions, and at cemeteries. Online instances of anti-Semitism included in the audit are limited to targeted harassment of individuals on online platforms.
Though many elected officials, celebrities, and media sources have fixated upon white supremacist groups and right-wing hate as the sole source of rising anti-Semitism in the U.S. since 2016, the ADL’s 2019 audit continues to demonstrate that anti-Jewish hate is diverse. The ADL found that 270 incidents, or just 13% of total incidents, were carried out by known extremist groups or individuals inspired by extremist ideology.
Speaking to the press on May 12, Oren Segal, the vice president of the ADL’s Center on Extremism, said: “The vast majority of anti-Semitic incidents that we’ve documented in our report are not committed by extremists. … The perpetrators that we know of are often your average Janes, your average Joes. They are kids, they are adults. They are in poor areas, they come from more affluent areas. It’s online, it’s offline. These incidents are not constrained by politics and even ideology. Indeed, I think this report … shows how anti-Semitism can be found in pretty much all segments of society.”
Even the two deadly attacks in 2019 that were motivated by extremism demonstrate the scope of anti-Jewish hate in the U.S. While the Poway attacker espoused white supremacist ideology, one of the Jersey City attackers was associated with a Black Hebrew Israelites sect. Segal elaborated that “these attacks serve as a reminder that anti-Semitism is the lifeblood of a wide range of extremist movements and beliefs.”
When fighting against anti-Semitism, Greenblatt urged people not to examine hate-driven incidents in merely Poway, Jersey City, and Monsey. “The overall level of hate in society cannot be accurately measured only by tracking high-profile and even lethal incidents,” he said. “We’ve got to pay attention when kids snap ‘Heil Hitler’ salutes as a joke or when Jewish students are ostracized on a college campus for supporting Israel. [Hate is] also measured in the swastikas painted on synagogue walls or scratched into public bathroom doors. If we hope to put the lid back on the sewers of hate, we must not only fight criminal activity but the apathy that comes when anti-Semitism is normalized.”
To counter the multifaceted growth of anti-Semitism and to “inoculate the next generation against the virus of … hate,” Greenblatt and the ADL call for diverse remedies. These include improved anti-hate, anti-bias, and Holocaust and genocide education, increased funding for security at Jewish institutions, increased funding at the federal level for investigating and combating extremism, stronger hate crimes laws throughout the U.S., and enhanced support from social media platforms, where individuals are plying their prejudice with limited recourse.
Greenblatt particularly called on leaders at all levels of government to step up. “Whether you are the president of the United States, you are the president of a university, or you are the president of your local PTA,” he stressed, “speak out to clearly denounce anti-Semitism and hate, whatever the source, and whenever it arises. This is particularly important in the environment where anti-Semitism all too often has been politicized.”
ADL’s audit demonstrates a threat that reaches across the political aisles and permeates all of society. Even as the tenor of national conversation becomes increasingly partisan with the 2020 elections approaching, leaders must put political goals aside and unite in their vocal condemnation of the pernicious rise of anti-Semitism.
Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance writer from the Detroit area.
