February 23, 2023
THIS WEEK’S GLOBAL ANTISEMITISM REPORT
Police investigations found that the LA shooter who targeted Jewish worshippers as they left their respective synagogues had previously sent antisemitic messages to former classmates in December and cited a flier, apparently of the type routinely distributed by the white supremacist Goyim Defense League, that blamed Jews for the COVID-19 pandemic.
Following the attacks on Jewish worshipers in Los Angeles, the newly elected Councilwoman Katy Yaroslavsky called for $150,000 to fund additional security for Jewish institutions. Similar literature has surfaced this week across Florida, Texas, Tennessee, Oregon, Virginia, and California. In North Carolina, a Nazi flag was left in front of a synagogue and in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, a synagogue was vandalized with a swastika. In Georgia, a House committee approved a bill that targets crimes against Jewish people and threatening antisemitic imagery such as swastikas.
In the United Kingdom, the Brixton branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign called for the targeting and ostracizing of Zionists while officials in the government shared evidence of Iranian attempts to target Jewish figures and leaders. In Jordan, a Rabbi’s tefillin were desecrated by airport officials and in Qalqilya, a Palestinian school funded by the US Agency for International Development (USAID) celebrated a terrorist attack that took place in Jerusalem on International Holocaust Remembrance Day which claimed the lives of seven Jewish worshipers.
This week’s global antisemitism report highlights 44 new media reports of antisemitic incidents. The total includes 26 (59.1%) from the far-right, 4 (9.1%) from the far-left, 6 (13.6%) with Islamist motivations, and 8 (18.2%) unidentifiable in nature.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
UNITED STATES
NEO-NAZIS RALLY OUTSIDE BROADWAY PREVIEW OF ‘PARADE,’ ABOUT AN ANTISEMITIC MURDER
By PHILISSA CRAMER
Protestors outside the first preview performance of Parade tonight greeted audience members with chants such as “[Leo Frank is] a Jewish Pedophile.” One protestor can be heard shouting “Learn the truth about what you’re going to see tonight. You’re paying $300 to go fuc*ing worship a pedophile, you might as well know what you’re talking about.” Another protestor can be heard saying, “Romanticizing pedophiles, Wow!” It is now widely accepted that Leo Frank was innocent and his conviction was a result of growing antisemitism in the American South at the time.
FLORIDA: MAN HURLED ANTISEMITIC SLUR, PUNCHED CYCLIST WHO WAS SPEAKING HEBREW IN DANIA BEACH
By VANESSA MEDINA AND MARISELA BURGOS
A man out for a bicycle ride in Dania Beach was the victim of antisemitic attack that sent him to the hospital with serious injuries, authorities said. “The victim told detectives that he was riding his bicycle while he was on the phone speaking in Hebrew when an unknown individual hurled an antisemitic slur at him and punched him in the face,” said Broward Sheriff’s Office spokesperson Gerdy St. Louis.
POLICE SEARCH FOR MAN WHO LEFT SWASTIKA FLAG AT NORTH CAROLINA SYNAGOGUE
By JNS
Police in Boone, N.C., have released images of a man they allege waved a flag with a swastika on it outside of the Temple of the High Country on Feb. 15. According to a statement on the synagogue’s home page, several people reported the incident and the man to authorities. A short time later, two members of Appalachian State University’s AEPi chapter saw the hateful flag draped over the synagogue’s sign and removed it. Boone police said they were “disheartened” by the incident.
WORLD NEWS
UNITED KINGDOM
GROUP CALLS ON BRITONS TO ROOT OUT ‘ZIONISTS’ AND HAVE THEM SACKED
By GEORGIA L GILHOLY
A pro-Palestinian group in London is urging British workers to root out “Zionist” colleagues and have them fired. A pamphlet posted on Instagram by a Brixton branch of the Palestine Solidarity Campaign (PSC) says that “Zionists need to be called out.” The booklet also urges people to refuse to speak to people who support the existence of the Jewish state, writing: “Why engage in conversation with a supporter of this? “ZIONISM: An inherently violent & terroristic movement for colonizing Palestine through the theft of Palestinian land and the ethnic cleansing of indigenous Palestinians in order to create a Jewish-supremacist settler colony.”
IRAN PLOTTING TO KILL BRITISH JEWS, MINISTER CONFIRMS AFTER JC EXCLUSIVE
By FELIX POPE
Security Minister Tom Tugendhat has confirmed the Jewish Chronicle’s exclusive this afternoon by revealing that the Iranian government spied on Jews in Britain and plotted to kill them. While delivering an urgent statement on threats to journalists in Britain, Tom Tugendhat told parliament: “Between 2020 and 2022, Iran tried to collect intelligence on UK-based Israeli and Jewish individuals. “We believe this information was a preparation for future lethal operations.”
‘AN INSULT TO THOSE FIGHTING ANTISEMITISM:’ FRENCH MP’S ‘FREE PALESTINE’ TWEET CONDEMNED
By ALGEMEINER STAFF
Jewish and anti-racist groups in France have roundly condemned a far left member of parliament who posted a photograph of herself meeting with Palestinian solidarity activists above a tweet concerned with antisemitism. On Friday, MP Ersilia Soudais sparked widespread ire with a tweet announcing her meeting with three Palestinian solidarity activists that claimed the group had discussed “the fight against antisemitism and solidarity with the Palestinian people.” The tweet ended with the hash tag “Free Palestine.”
OTHER WORLD NEWS
BULGARIA: 18 NGOS SIGN DECLARATION AGAINST HATE SPEECH AND FOR BANNING OF PRO-FASCIST LUKOV MARCH
By SOFIA GLOBE STAFF
Representatives of 18 non-governmental organizations signed on February 16 a declaration “Against the hate that divides us” that states rejection of hate speech and calls for the banning of the Lukov March. Held annually in Bulgaria’s capital city Sofia since 2003, the Lukov March, organized and backed by extreme far-right groups, is a torchlight procession in honor of Hristo Lukov, who led the pro-Nazi Union of Bulgarian National Legions at the time of the Second World War.
MAIN BDS HANDLE TWEETS PHOTO OF JEWISH HOLOCAUST VICTIMS, CALLS THEM PALESTINIANS
By JNS
The official Twitter account of the Palestinian BDS National Committee, which calls itself the “Palestinian leadership of the global Boycott, Divestment & Sanctions (BDS) movement,” shared an image with its 237,800 followers, which it referred to as Palestinian victims of the “Tantura massacre.” According to the Harry S. Truman Library and Museum, the April 1945 photo shows the following: “Rows of bodies of dead inmates fill yard of Lager Nordhausen, a Gestapo Concentration Camp near Nordhausen, Germany. The photograph, according to the cameraman, shows less than half of the bodies of the several hundred inmates who died of starvation or were shot by Gestapo men at the camp.
PA HOLOCAUST DISTORTION: THE ZIONISTS “EXAGGERATED” THE NUMBER OF HOLOCAUST VICTIMS
ON CAMPUS
WITNESSES SAY ANTISEMITIC SLURS SPARKED POST-GAME MELEE BETWEEN SOUTH FLORIDA HIGH SCHOOL SOCCER TEAMS
By CAM
There was violence on a soccer field Wednesday night during a 2023 Boys Soccer State Championship Tournament game between two religious private schools in Miami-Dade County. The chaos ensued after Scheck Hillel lost the home game 2-1. Archbishop Coleman Carroll students knew they were moving forward to the Feb. 18 semifinals for a chance to win the state championship. Tila Levi, a Scheck Hillel parent, told Local 10 her children who attended the game told her there were insults — including painful antisemitic slurs.
CALIFORNIA: ANTISEMITIC INCIDENT REPORTED AT SHALHEVET GIRLS BASKETBALL GAME
By HARVEY FARR
An antisemitic incident occurred Saturday night at a girls high school basketball game between the Shalhevet Firehawks and the Buena Park Coyotes. “The scores were really neck and neck and it was just overall a very intense game,” a Shalhevet student, who preferred to remain anonymous, told the Journal. “My friend was standing across the gym by the other team when she texted me and told me they were chanting Kanye West at her the entire game. They were shouting at her and yelling that they were going to fight after the game.”
ANALYSIS & OP-EDS
STUDIES & STATISTICS
STUDENTS CLAIM UNIVERSITY ‘TRIVIALIZES’ ANTISEMITISM AS NEW UK FINDINGS RELEASED
By LUKE CHAFER AND CHARLOTTE CHRISTIAN
New report reveals allegations of antisemitism within UK university campuses have seen a 23% increase in 2020-22 compared to the previous two-year period. Yet following a Freedom of Information request (FOI) last year, The Glasgow Guardian learned that in the past three years there have only been two reports of antisemitism made by students via the official reporting channels, in both cases no action was taken. Despite this one student informed The Glasgow Guardian that they alone submitted four complaints in this same period. One of these incidents was used as a case study of antisemitism conducted by a member of university staff towards a student in the report.
GOVERNMENT & POLICY
LOS ANGELES MAYOR PLEDGES TO WORK WITH JEWISH COMMUNITY FOLLOWING ANTISEMITIC ATTACKS
By ESTHER D. KUSTANOWITZ
Addressing hate is a “chief component” of Los Angeles’ public safety agenda, Mayor Karen Bass said at a town hall hosted by the Jewish Federation of Greater Los Angeles on Monday evening, following the arrest of a man charged in two separate shootings outside of local synagogues in recent weeks. “Antisemitism crawls out of the shadows,” Bass said. “Make no mistake, Angelenos from every community stand united to stamp it out and to ensure that justice is served. Antisemitism has no place in Los Angeles.”
39 HOUSE AND SENATE REPUBLICANS INTRODUCE BILL TO CUT OFF UNRWA FUNDING
By ANDREW BERNARD
Rep. Chip Roy (R-TX) introduced legislation to cut off funding to the UN agency that assists Palestinian refugees and their descendents unless the agency completes radical reforms to counter its anti-Israel, anti-American, and antisemitic tendencies. Formally titled the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) Accountability and Transparency Act, the bill would require to the US Secretary of State to withhold all US funding to UNRWA unless he certified that UNRWA is subjected to an external audit, does not employ anyone with ties to US-designated terrorist groups, and that its schools and other infrastructure are not used for terrorist activities, among other requirements.
HUMANITY
UNITED ARAB EMIRATES OPENS SYNAGOGUE IN ABRAHAMIC FAMILY HOUSE COMPLEX
By ANDREW BERNARD
The United Arab Emirates on Thursday inaugurated the Abrahamic Family House, a religious complex containing a synagogue, a mosque, and a church, in the UAE’s capital Abu Dhabi. The Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue will hold its first Shabbat services on Friday, while the complex as a whole will be open to the public from 1 March. The UAE’s President Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed credited the opening of the first purpose-built synagogue in the UAE to the country’s history of diversity.
More than 2 million INDIVIDUALS AND 600 ORGANIZATIONS HAVE JOINED OUR MOVEMENT. THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT!
The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) is a global coalition engaging more than 600 partner organizations and nearly two million people from a diverse array of religious, political, and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world’s oldest hatred. CAM acts collaboratively to build a better future, free of bigotry, for Jews and all humanity.
