As the world commemorates Holocaust Remembrance Day, a new report highlights the lingering disease of antisemitism around the world.
The Annual Antisemitism Worldwide Report, published by Tel Aviv University (TAU) and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), indicates an increase of dozens of percentage points in the number of antisemitic incidents in Western countries between 2022 and 2023.
Antisemitic incidents spiked dramatically after Oct. 7, when Hamas terrorists stormed into Israel and killed around 1,200 people and took around 240 others hostage. But the trend was already well underway in the first nine months of 2023, according to the report.
The report’s authors write that Oct. 7 “helped spread a fire that was already out of control.”
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In total, the ADL recorded more than 7,500 incidents in the U.S. in 2023 – up from nearly 3,700 incidents in 2022. Applying a broader definition, the report recorded nearly 8,900 incidents.
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Similar trends were seen across other western countries with significant Jewish population. France, for instance, saw incidents increase from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023. Germany saw incidents increase from 2,639 to 3,614 over the same time period.
The report’s release comes on the heels of weeks of nationwide campus protests over Israel’s now seven-month war in Gaza, that has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians. Protesters insist that their message is aimed at the state of Israel, but many Jewish students on campuses have said these demonstrations have leaned into incidents of outright antisemitism.
President Biden addressed the ongoing protests last week, decrying both antisemitism and Islamophobia as forms of hate speech.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), meanwhile, has recorded a similar spike in incidents of “Anti-Muslim Hate.” The group recorded more than 8,061 complaints nationwide in 2023 – the highest number it ever recorded in its 30-year history. Nearly half of those were in the final three months of 2023.
Those figures represented a 56% increase over 2022. CAIR has blamed this spike in Islamophobia on the escalation of violence in Israel and Gaza after October 2023.
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