Oct. 7 (UPI) — Reports of antisemitic incidents in the United States surged to a record high amid Israel’s war against Iran-backed Hamas, according to a leading U.S.-based Jewish organization dedicated to combating antisemitism.
The Anti-Defamation League said in a report released Sunday that it received more than 10,000 reports of U.S.-based antisemitic incidents between Oct. 7, 2023 — the start of Israel’s war against Hamas — and Sept. 24.
It said this figure represents more than a 200% increase compared to the same period a year prior, and is also the highest number of incidents the ADL has ever recorded in a single year period. The organization first began tallying such incidents in 1979.
The ADL released the report to coincide with the grim one-year mark of the start of the Israel-Hamas war, which began with the Iran-proxy militia’s bloody attack on Israel that killed 1,200 Israelis and saw another 251 others being kidnapped.
“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,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive officer of ADL. “Instead, we’ve faced a shocking number of antisemitic threats and experienced calls for more violence against Israelis and Jews everywhere.”
The war has seen reports of hate crimes and bias complaints targeting Jews, Muslims and Arabs skyrocket.
A breakdown of ADL’s tallied reports showed there were 8,015 incidents of verbal or written harassment against Jews in the United States, more than 1,840 incidents of vandalism and more than 150 incidents of physical assault.
The report added that at least 1,200 of the incidents occurred on college campuses, which had been locations of staunch pro-Palestinian protests following the breakout of the war.
The Council of American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, said it had received more than 3,578 anti-Islam, -Palestinian, -Arab and -Muslim complaints during the first three months of the war, representing a 178% increase of the same period a year prior.
From January to June, it said it document another 4,951 such complaints, an increase of 69% over the same period in 2023.
Israel has responded to the Oct. 7, 2023, attack with an all-out assault on Gaza, killing at least 41,870 Palestinians and wounding more than 97,000 others in the enclave, according to Gaza’s health ministry.
Since late last month, it has also intensified its attacks targeting Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon, killing more than 1,000 people there, according to local health officials.
