The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which tracks anti-semitic behavior, reports that incidents in the US increased by more than a third in just one year and reached nearly 3,700 cases in 2022. This number is growing steadily into this year and is regarded as the largest year-on-year increase since the organization began collecting data in 1979.
In 2022, incidents included but were not exclusive to assaults, vandalism, and harassment cases. On average, this is about more than seven incidents per day and a 34 percent increase.
National director of ADL, Jonathan Greenblatt, says in a 2022 interview, “When it comes to antisemitic activity in America, you cannot point to any single ideology or belief system, and in many cases, we simply don’t know the motivation…But we do know that Jews are experiencing more antisemitic incidents than we have in this country in at least 40 years, and that’s a deeply troubling indicator of larger societal fissures.”
According to CNN, a former student killed a University of Arizona professor who he believed to be Jewish in October 2022. This February, a man was charged with two hate crimes after he allegedly shot two people who were exiting two different synagogues in Los Angeles. And earlier this month, there was an investigation into swastikas and an image resembling Adolf Hitler found on a Jewish student’s door.
“Despite the rise of antisemitism, there is still a perception in many people’s minds that Jews are not under threat, that they are successful and wealthy, and are not a targeted minority,” says Mark Weitzman, who is chief officer at The World Jewish Restitution Organization.
According to the FBI hate crime figures for 2021, it was reported that American Jews are disproportionately affected by hate crimes compared to other religious groups. However, statistics from official law enforcement are significantly underreported.
Robert Williams, historian and outside source from the ADL report, says, “Non-Jewish populations in the United States haven’t quite come to that point of making the realization that they also need to stand up against antisemitism, that antisemitism is not just a Jewish problem, but it’s a collective problem – it’s a threat to national security, and it’s a threat to our democracy.”
