Antisemitism Surges Around World as Israel, Hamas Clash

In New York City, a protester attending a pro-Hamas rally on Sunday was seen brandishing a swastika, leading Mayor Eric Adams to condemn the protest.

In Sydney, unverified footage distributed by the Australian Jewish Association appeared to show a group of protesters outside the Sydney Opera House shouting, “Gas the Jews.” Police are investigating the incident.

Pro-Hamas Rallies in U.S.
The American Jewish Committee said it has recorded about a dozen pro-Hamas protests in several U.S. cities, including New York, Washington, Philadelphia, San Francisco and Chicago.

Holly Huffnagle, U.S. director of antisemitism at the AJC, said the Jewish advocacy group backs Palestinian rights but warns that the protests extend from criticism of Israel to antisemitism and conspiracies about Jews.

“This is support for Hamas as a terrorist group,” she said.

Addressing a group of American Jewish leaders Wednesday afternoon, President Biden acknowledged the war in Israel has led to a rise in hate and antisemitism.

Joined by Second Gentleman Doug Emhoff, who is Jewish and serves as the White House’s point person on combating antisemitism, Biden said his administration was taking “meaningful actions … to fight back against antisemitism and hate.”

With Israel poised for a massive ground assault on Gaza and no end in sight, experts predict a surge of antisemitic incidents in the days ahead as the conflict intensifies.

“Considering that the current escalation will be longer and most intense, we should expect a more substantial increase in antisemitism in comparison to previous escalations in the conflict,” said Arie Perliger, a professor at the School of Criminology and Justice Studies at the University of Massachusetts.

Surge in aAttacks
The recent surge in antisemitic attacks is not an isolated phenomenon but part of a long-standing pattern, Levin said.

In October 2000, violent protests in Israel triggered a 152% spike in antisemitic hate crimes in the United States, according to Levin’s research.

In May 2021, clashes between Israel and Hamas led to a 187% increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes in New York City and a nearly four-fold increase in antisemitic hate in Los Angeles.

“We saw spikes in London, and indeed, nearly every major European country that reported antisemitic hate crimes for 2021 showed increases,” Levin said.

The ADL reported earlier this year that incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment targeting Jews in the United States rose to new “historic levels” in 2022.

Tom Copeland, director of research at the Centennial Institute at Colorado Christian University, said 2023 has been another record year for antisemitic activity.

“It’s a long-term trend in the U.S. and in the U.K. as well,” Copeland said in an interview. “So, it does seem that from this weekend, certainly on social media, especially on Telegram [and] to a certain extent on TikTok, all of the voices that are antisemitic are emerging once again.”

But Jews are not the only targets of hate when violence flares up in the Middle East.

In 1985, Palestinian activist Alex Odeh was killed in California by a pipe bomb allegedly set off by extremist American Jews. The case remains unresolved.

In 1994, American Israeli extremist Baruch Goldstein killed 29 Muslim worshippers and wounded 125 others inside a mosque in Hebron in the West Bank.

The recent conflict has also spawned isolated acts of Islamophobia. On Tuesday, a sign at a Muslim religious academy in Boston was defaced with the word “Nazis,” sparking calls for a hate crime investigation.

The Council on Islamic American Relations said on Wednesday it has received a flood of reports of Palestinian and Muslim students facing harassment for their advocacy on behalf of the Palestinian territories.

Levin noted that violence in the Middle East usually triggers less anti-Muslim hate crimes than anti-Jewish incidents. But this time, he warned of a serious backlash against Muslims and Arabs as Americans have fallen victim to attacks and kidnappings.

Maha Elgenaidi, founder and executive director of California-based Islamic Networks Group, condemned the recent acts of antisemitism as “horrific.”

“I just think it’s fueling the anti-Semitism that has always existed in the United States and throughout Europe,” Elgenaidi, an Egyptian American, said.

She said that while dialogue is the key to healing the rift between Jews and Muslims, the pain inflicted on both sides is too fresh to enable an interfaith conversation.

“A lot of people that I know have family in Gaza and that have been directly hurt and the same thing with Jewish friends that I’ve spoken with,” she said.

Masood Farivar covers the Justice Department and the FBI for Voice of America. This article is published courtesy of the Voice of America (VOA).