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ADL reports massive increase in antisemitic incidents in 2022
(JTA) – From Neo-Nazi propaganda campaigns to attacks against Orthodox Jews to threats directed at synagogues, the number of antisemitic incidents in the United States saw a dramatic increase in 2022, according to an annual audit published by the Anti-Defamation League.
The ADL counted 3,697 incidents of harassment, vandalism and assault targeting Jews last year — a 36% increase from the 2,717 recorded in 2021 and by far the highest total since the organization began tallying the data in 1979. The incidents include one fatality — the killing in October of Thomas Meixner, a professor at the University of Arizona who was shot allegedly by a student, in part because the student believed Meixner was Jewish. The tally also includes the hostage situation at a Texas synagogue early in 2022.
The ADL’s audit is the most widely cited and comprehensive source of data on antisemitic incidents in the United States, and its conclusion tracks with a recent report by the FBI showing an increase in hate crimes.
“This data confirms what Jewish communities across the country have felt and seen firsthand – and corresponds with the rise in antisemitic attitudes,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement.
The ADL found that there were increases in several different forms of antisemitism, from incidents at schools and college campuses to antisemitism targeting Orthodox Jews to bomb threats against Jewish institutions.
There was a particularly large spike in propaganda distribution by white supremacist groups. One such group, the Florida-based Goyim Defense League, alone was responsible for at least 492 incidents of propaganda in 2022, 13.3% of the total number of antisemitic incidents tallied in the report. This year, a man accused of shooting two Jews in Los Angeles said he was inspired by a propaganda flier of the type distributed by the group.
One category that saw a decline was antisemitism that involved references to Israel or Zionism. There were 241 incidents of that kind in 2022, a decrease from the 345 recorded in 2021, when a conflict that May between Israel and Hamas in Gaza was accompanied by a spike in attacks on Jews. Incidents revolving around Israel or Zionism represented 6.5% of last year’s total.
The stream of antisemitic comments last fall by the rapper Kanye West, who goes by Ye, also inspired a portion of last year’s antisemitism. Nearly 60 incidents involved direct references to Ye.
A team at the ADL gathered reports from the organization’s regional offices, individual victims, law enforcement, a range of partner organizations and other sources, and then vetted each incident to eliminate duplicates and ensure it matched the organization’s criteria for what constitutes an antisemitic incident, according to Aryeh Tuchman, a senior associate director at the ADL’s Center on Extremism.
The report’s methodology section says it includes incidents in which “circumstances indicate anti-Jewish animus on the part of the perpetrator” or “a reasonable person could plausibly conclude they were being victimized due to their Jewish identity,” as well as incidents involving swastikas. Vandalism of Jewish institutions, and some online antisemitism, could also be included.
“We spend a great deal of time deduplicating, manually reviewing and trying to get as much information as we can about all of the incidents,” Tuchman said.
Tuchman added that the ADL can’t possibly capture every incident that has occurred. He also acknowledged that some of the increase in the number of antisemitic incidents recorded is likely due to the ADL’s ongoing effort to expand its sources of information, which include multiple Jewish religious organizations and security agencies. But he said that any effect of adding new sources is marginal, and that there is overwhelming evidence that antisemitism is sharply on the rise.
“It’s a question that we look at every year: Is there an actual rise in the number of incidents or are we just finding more incidents because we’re looking in more places?” he said. “We’re not getting a huge number of incidents as a result of new data sources — maybe some, but especially with the most serious incidents, there are only a limited number of incidents of synagogues that are vandalized every year.”
Tuchman added, “Where we know we are always undercounting is harassment,” which people are less likely to report.
There were 111 cases of antisemitic assault tallied in the audit, a 26% increase from 2021. Instances of harassment were up 29%, reaching 2,298 last year, and the 1,288 vandalism incidents logged in 2022 represent a 51% increase.
The hostage crisis in Colleyville, Texas, in January 2022 was registered among 589 incidents targeting Jewish institutions last year. Of those, 91 were bomb threats, the highest number since 2017, when synagogues received more than 100 bomb threats, most of which came from a teenager in Israel.
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The post ADL reports massive increase in antisemitic incidents in 2022 appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation
(JTA) — Israel criticized Ukraine Monday after President Volodymyr Zelensky gave full state honors to a Ukrainian nationalist leader who was part of a movement that collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.
During a reburial ceremony on Sunday, Zelensky described Andriy Melnyk and his wife, Sofia Fedak-Melnyk, as “iconic Ukrainians of the 20th century who are deeply respected,” according to The New York Times.
Melnyk led one of the factions of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists during its collaboration with Nazi Germany during World War II. Though the Ukrainian organization shared a mutual opposition to Soviet rule with the Nazis, it also promoted antisemitic rhetoric and some of its members participated in the persecution of Jews during the Holocaust. Melnyk initially sought cooperation with Nazi Germany but was later detained by the Nazis as relations with Ukrainian nationalist groups deteriorated.
The ceremony marked the latest flashpoint in a longstanding dispute over Ukraine’s commemoration of World War II-era nationalist figures linked to Nazi collaboration. In 2018, the country designated the birthday of Nazi collaborator Stepan Bandera as a holiday, and in 2017, a statue was unveiled honoring a nationalist leader whose regime killed tens of thousands of Jews in pogroms during the Russian Revolution.
The remains of Melnyk and his wife were exhumed from Luxembourg last week and then transported to Ukraine for reburial at Kyiv’s National Military Memorial, which opened last year for soldiers killed in Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.
“Glory to every Ukrainian hero! Glory to all our Ukrainian warriors! Glory to our people!,” Zelensky, who is Jewish, wrote in a post on X marking the ceremony, adding that he was “grateful to everyone who has worked to make such returns of great Ukrainian figures possible and to give the Ukrainian People their own pantheon of heroes.”
The reburial was quickly decried by Yad Vashem, Israel’s Holocaust memorial, which wrote in a post on X that it was “deeply troubled by such national commemorations, which come at the expense of historical truth and the memory of Holocaust victims.”
“Honoring the leader of a movement that supported and collaborated with Nazi Germany during the persecution and murder of millions of Jews undermines the moral integrity essential to Holocaust remembrance,” the post read.
Israel’s Foreign Ministry wrote on X that there is “no place for ignoring historical truth and the memory of the victims murdered by the Nazis and their collaborators.”
The post Ukraine reburies Nazi collaborator with state honors, drawing Israeli condemnation appeared first on The Forward.
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Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’
(JTA) — The U.S. Department of Justice sued the University of California for the second time this year over allegations of an antisemitic campus environment at UCLA, claiming the school “was deliberately indifferent to the suffering of its Jewish and Israeli students” after Oct. 7.
The federal lawsuit, filed Tuesday, claims UCLA violated the students’ civil rights by failing to intervene during pro-Palestinian encampment activity in early 2024. It follows an earlier suit that focused on the university’s treatment of its Jewish and Israeli employees, and comes 10 days after the university unveiled its own “Initiative to Combat Antisemitism.”
“Earlier this year, we sued UCLA for subjecting its Jewish and Israeli employees to an antisemitic hostile work environment,” assistant U.S. attorney general Harmeet Dhillon said in a press release. “Now, the Department of Justice calls UCLA to account for its toleration of the equally appalling hostile educational environment against its Jewish and Israeli students.”
Requests for comment to the Justice Department and UCLA were not immediately returned.
The new suit draws on widely reported accounts of UCLA’s campus environment in spring 2024, when protesters in pro-Palestinian encampments clashed with pro-Israel counter-protesters, sparking violence and turmoil. The failure to protect Jewish students violated their Title VI civil rights, attorneys said.
Citing the report of UCLA’s own task force on antisemitism, published in response to the 2024 campus upheaval, the suit states, “UCLA’s leadership apparently preferred a do-nothing ‘de-escalation strategy’ to protecting their Jewish and Israeli students from an angry mob organized by peers armed with tasers, lumber, and a sword.”
The Justice Department is seeking several redress measures, including the return of all federal grants made to UCLA “during the time of UCLA’s noncompliance with Title VI.” The school had previously resolved several Title VI antisemitism cases under the Biden administration, and also reached a $6.13 million settlement with Jewish groups in a private suit related to the spring 2024 incidents on campus — a case cited in DOJ’s new lawsuit.
The Trump administration has sought to make a particular example of UCLA in its aggressive approach to campus antisemitism. Officials had sought to levy fines in excess of $1 billion against the public university for its alleged failure to protect Jewish and Israeli students, until a federal judge intervened. Several DOJ lawyers have left the department over its UCLA investigation, telling reporters the case was “fraudulent,” a “sham” and driven by pressure to “find” evidence to support further legal action against UCLA.
In addition, some of the most violent clashes on the campuses included perpetrators on both sides of the conflict, leading some members of the UCLA Jewish community to complain that pro-Israel counter-protesters ultimately undercut the Jewish students’ legitimate grievances regarding the harassment they had been facing inside the campus gates.
And the campus environment for Jews remains tense. Last month, the UCLA student senate condemned a campus visit by a freed Israeli hostage, drawing blowback from a university regent.
The post Trump administration again sues UCLA over antisemitism, alleging ‘hostile educational environment’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic
(JTA) — Dozens of European Jewish leaders, joined by Israeli and American diplomats, decried Antwerp prosecutors who plan to charge two Jewish men with performing illegal circumcisions.
In an open letter on Tuesday to European and Belgian officials, 45 communal and religious Jewish leaders accused the Antwerp Public Prosecutor’s Office of “effectively criminalizing the act of circumcision” and infringing on religious freedom.
Earlier this month, Belgian prosecutors announced their recommendation to refer two mohels, or ritual circumcisers, to the criminal court following investigations into alleged illegal circumcisions.
In Belgium, the law requires all circumcisions to be performed by licensed medical professionals. The two men would be charged with intentional assault or battery against minors and the unlawful practice of medicine.
The European Jewish leaders responded that prosecuting mohels was “antisemitic in nature, reminiscent of efforts taken in Europe against Jewish practice prior to the Second World War.”
They said the potential prosecutions sent a message that “Jews are no longer welcome in Belgium” and “Belgian Jews are now second class citizens with limited rights.” Their appeal was led by the chairman of the European Jewish Association, Rabbi Menachem Margolin.
Israeli and U.S. officials have also accused Belgium of targeting Jews for practicing their faith.
Gideon Saar, Israel’s minister of foreign affairs, called the prosecutors’ decision a “scarlet letter on Belgian society.” He was joined by the U.S. ambassador to Belgium, Bill White, who said on X that Belgium “will be thought of now as anti Semitic by world.”
Belgium’s foreign minister fired back that it was “inappropriate to publicly criticize a country and tarnish its image simply because you disagree with judicial proceedings.”
“I recall that the proceedings in question were initiated by representatives of the Jewish community themselves,” said Maxime Prévot. “To portray those as a country’s desire to undermine the religious freedom of Jews is defamatory.”
The mohels were first investigated after complaints lodged by Moshe Aryeh Friedman, an Antwerp rabbi. He alleged in 2023 that six local mohels practiced metzitzah b’peh, in which the circumciser cleans the circumcision wound with oral suction. Over the past two decades, several infants in New York City were infected with herpes as a result of the practice.
The letter from European Jewish leaders did not address Friedman’s claims.
The post Jewish leaders say Belgium’s prosecution of circumcision is antisemitic appeared first on The Forward.