Dear Friends,
U.S. actress and TV personality Whoopi Goldberg apologized after once again claiming the Holocaust was “not about race.” ABC suspended “The View” co-host for two weeks last February over a similar statement.
As the Hanukkah holiday drew to a close, menorahs were desecrated in New York, California, Oregon, and Maine, as well as Berlin and Freiburg, Germany, Miskolc, Hungary, and Temuco, Chile, among other locations.
A San Francisco man was charged with a hate crime for beating a Jewish passerby with a skateboard, and in Cameron, North Carolina, a neo-Nazi banner was hung on a highway overpass for the second time in a week.
In Brazil, a Jewish economist was targeted with antisemitic vitriol during a livestreamed media interview, and in Aschaffenburg, Germany, the memorial to the former synagogue at Wolfsthalplatz was defaced with green paint.
In London, England, a Jewish man returning from synagogue was threatened by a chain-wielding assailant, and a woman on an Underground train was sexualy harassed by two men, one of whom yelled, “We hate the Jews.”
In Uzhgorod, Ukraine, several antisemitic slogans, including “Kill the Jews,” were spray-painted on the façade of a building. The monument to the Jewish cemetery in Thessaloniki, Greece – one of the oldest in Europe – was desecrated with Nazi and other fascist symbols.
Italian Jewish leaders denounced the president of the country’s parliament after he published a social media post honoring the Italian Social Movement, or MSI, a neo-fascist party founded in the wake of World War II.
Meanwhile, a new report by the Texas Holocaust, Genocide, and Antisemitism Advisory Commission for the 2023 Texas legislature, found that antisemitic incidents in Texas are not only increasing in frequency, but severity as well. So far, 60 antisemitic incidents have occurred throughout the state in 2022, representing a 400% increase.
According to a new report by the Israel Defense Forces, 31 Israelis, mostly civilians, were killed in terror attacks in 2022, a significant escalation in violence directed toward Israelis from the previous few years.
This week’s global antisemitism report highlights 29 new media reports of antisemitic incidents. The total includes 13 (44.8%) from the far-right, 3 (10.3%) from the far-left, 0 (0.0%) with Islamist motivations, and 13 (44.8%) unidentifiable in nature.
