Anti-Semitic incidents spike in US – report

A record number of anti-Semitic incidents have been recorded in the US since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza last October, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has reported.

Monday marks exactly one year since the militant group attacked Israel, killing around 1,100 people and taking more than 200 hostages.

Israel’s bombing and ground operation against Hamas in Gaza, in which more than 40,000 people are reported to have been killed, has sparked pro-Palestinian and anti-war protests around the world, including a number of large protests on US college campuses.

In the past year, more than 10,000 anti-Semitic incidents have been recorded in the US, more than three times the number in the year before, the New York-based ADL said in a press release on Sunday. The incidents were recorded between October 7, 2023 to September 24, 2024. At least 1,200 of the cases took place on US college campuses, while more than 3,000 happened during “anti-Israel rallies,” according to a statement from the NGO.

“Today, we mourn the victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, marking one year since the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. From that day on, Jewish Americans haven’t had a single moment of respite,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said.

According to statistics collated by the ADL Center of Extremism, 150 of the cases involved physical assault, 1,840 were vandalism, and 8,015 were incidents of verbal or written harassment.

Among recent incidents, two Jewish students were physically assaulted on separate occasions in the US. In the first case, a Jewish university student was wearing a Star of David necklace when he was attacked, while the second was asked whether they were Jewish before being assaulted.

To date, the Israeli military operation has killed nearly 42,000 Palestinians in Gaza, most of them women and children, according to the local Health Ministry. Israel’s actions have prompted South Africa to bring a case to the International Court of Justice, accusing the Jewish state of committing a ‘genocide’ against Palestinians.