Anti-Semitic incidents in US hit record high in 2019 — ADL report

American Jews were targets of more anti-Semitic incidents in 2019 than any other year over the past four decades, a surge marked by deadly attacks on a California synagogue, a Jewish grocery store in New Jersey and a rabbi’s New York home, the Anti-Defamation League reports in new findings.

The Jewish civil rights group counts 2,107 anti-Semitic incidents in 2019, finding 61 physical assault cases, 1,127 instances of harassment and 919 acts of vandalism. That’s the highest annual tally since the New York City-based group began tracking anti-Semitic incidents in 1979. It also marks a 12% increase over the 1,879 incidents it counted in 2018.

Jonathan Greenblatt, the group’s CEO, attributes last year’s record high to a “normalization of anti-Semitic tropes,” the “charged politics of the day” and social media. This year, he says, the COVID-19 pandemic is fueling anti-Semitic conspiracy theories.

“Anti-Semitism is a virus. It is like a disease, and it persists,” Greenblatt says. “It’s sometimes known as the oldest hatred. It never seems to go away. There truly is no single antidote or cure.”

The ADL’s count of anti-Semitic assaults involved 95 victims. More than half of the assaults occurred in New York City, including 25 in Brooklyn. Eight of those Brooklyn assaults happened during a span of eight days in December, primarily in neighborhoods where many Orthodox Jews live.

— AP