slate | A new report
from the Anti-Defamation League has found that the number of
anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. spiked in 2017, increasing by an
unprecedented 57 percent from the year before.
The ADL report cited 1,986 incidents of harassment, threats,
and vandalism targeting Jews in the country. It was the most dramatic
increase since the organization started tracking these incidents in the
1970s and the second-highest number on the record.
According to the ADL, this increase resulted in part from a
near doubling of incidents on schools and college campuses. The results
may also have been influenced in part by more widespread reporting. But
the report also specifically cited the white supremacist Unite the Right
rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and it noted a “rising climate of
incivility, the emboldening of hate groups, and widening divisions in
society.”
The rise in incidents took the form of vandalism and harassment, including 163 bomb threats
against Jewish institutions. (Physical assaults against Jews actually
fell, according to the report.) Two people were arrested in 2017 for
repeated bomb threats. One, an Israeli American teenager, was arrested
in March for making more than 150 of those
threats to Jewish community centers and other Jewish institutions.
“[R]egardless of the motivation of any specific perpetrator, Jewish
communities were repeatedly traumatized by these assaults on their
institutions and threats to their safety,” the ADL wrote in the report.
“The bomb threats sowed fear and anxiety among Jews across the country.”
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