While the total number of anti-Semitic incidents in the United States declined by 19 percent in the United States in 2013, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported a significant increase in violent anti-Semitic assaults.
The ADL’s annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents reported a total of 751 incidents across the US during the 2013 calendar year, representing a 19 percent decline from the 927 incidents reported during the same period in 2012. In 2013, anti-Semitic incidents were reported in 40 states and the District of Columbia.
But the Audit recorded a total of 31 anti-Semitic assaults on Jewish individuals or those perceived as Jewish in 2013, up from 17 in 2012.
“In the last decade we have witnessed a significant and encouraging decline in the number and intensity of anti-Semitic acts in America,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director. “The falling number of incidents targeting Jews is another indication of just how far we have come in finding full acceptance in society, and it is a reflection of how much progress our country has made in shunning bigotry and hatred.”
The annual ADL Audit includes incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment targeting Jews and Jewish property and institutions and includes both criminal and non-criminal incidents reported to ADL’s 27 regional offices across the country and to law enforcement.
The ADL said the reported anti-Semitic assaults included: an unprovoked attack by four men on a 24-year-old Jewish man wearing a yarmulke, in Brooklyn, NY; an assault on a 12-year-old Jewish girl, who had a bottle thrown at her by a group of girls, including one who yelled, “You dirty Jew”; and the attack on a Jewish man, in Los Angeles, CA, who was surrounded by five male suspects who yelled “Heil Hitler!” before striking him.
Abraham H. Foxman, ADL National Director, said, “The high number of violent in-your-face assaults is a sobering reminder that, despite the overall decline in anti-Semitic incidents, there is still a subset of Americans who are deeply infected with anti-Semitism and who feel emboldened enough to act out their bigotry. Such incidents are often among the most traumatic for individuals as they involve person-on-person violence.”
ADL has conducted the Audit annually in the U.S. since 1979.
In recent years, the ADL Audit has placed anti-Jewish incidents into one of three categories: assault, vandalism or harassment. In 2013 the numbers broke down as follows:
Assaults: 31 incidents reported in 2013, compared with 17 in 2012;
Vandalism: 315 incidents in 2013, compared with 440 in 2012;
Harassment, threats and events: 405 incidents in 2013, compared with 470 in 2012.
Once again, New York and California, while each experiencing declines compared to the previous year, topped the list.
New York State, with 203 incidents in 2013, down from 245 in 2012;
California, with 143 incidents, down from 185;
New Jersey, with 78 incidents, down from 173;
Florida, with 68 incidents, down from 88;
Massachusetts, with 46 incidents, up from 38;
Pennsylvania, with 43 incidents, up from 37.
“We must remember that there are people behind every one of these numbers, and every incident represents one person or an entire community affected by the trauma of anti-Semitism,” Barry Curtiss-Lusher, ADL National Chair, said. “Every swastika scrawled on a school or rally held by a racist group demands a response — by law enforcement, by the community, and by public officials — to ensure that we reinforce the message that anti-Semitism is unacceptable in society.”
The ADL said that it has also found a correlation between anti-Semitic incidents and Israeli military conflicts. While Israel was in the headlines in 2013 due to the on-going peace talks with the Palestinian Authority, there were relatively few mass demonstrations against the Jewish state. The ADL said “the 2006 war against Hezbollah in Lebanon and military campaigns in Gaza to thwart Hamas rocket attacks… spurred hundreds of demonstrations in major cities across the U.S. that sometimes featured blatantly anti-Semitic slogans, signs and rhetoric.”
Foxman said, “Because anti-Semitism has found its way into the periphery of the anti-Israel movement in recent years, a decrease in the number of anti-Israel demonstrations on campus and elsewhere translated to a decrease in the anti-Semitism that can accompany such events.”