THIS WEEK’S GLOBAL ANTISEMITISM REPORT
As the world paused to observe Yom Hashoah, leaders around the world spoke of the need to strengthen a culture of Holocaust remembrance amidst rising antisemitism, and Holocaust distortion.
To mark the occasion, Alaska became the 25th U.S. state to endorse the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, and global antisemitism envoys gathered in Jerusalem to discuss pathways to effectively combat resurgent Jew-hatred.
Amidst this period of remembrance, a series of new reports painted a disturbing picture of rising antisemitism worldwide. An annual study released by Tel Aviv University found that in 2021 “the largest Jewish populations outside Israel witnessed sharp increases in the number of recorded antisemitic incidents.”
The report attributed this global surge to “the strengthening in some countries of the radical populist right and the anti-Zionist radical left.” Record-breaking incidents of antisemitism were recorded in the U.S., Canada, U.K., Germany, France, the Netherlands, and Switzerland.
This week saw a surge in anti-Zionist antisemitic attacks, which saw a Jewish man violently beaten at a pro-Palestinian protest in New York City. Anti-Israel protesters in three German cities assaulted journalists and police while chanting “sh*tty Jews” and “strike, oh Qassam, don’t let the Zionists sleep.”
Similar protests calling for the destruction of the Jewish state through an intifada, took place in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Toronto. During this period of incitement, an Imam on official Palestinian Authority TV called for the “destruction of the tyrannical Jews.”
On campus, the AEPi Jewish fraternity house at Rutgers University was egged for a second year during its Yom Hashoah ceremony, days after being targeted by Students in Justice for Palestine (SJP) protesters who spat at the Jewish students while yelling antisemitic slurs.
SJP protesters also targeted the Hillel Jewish student center at the University of Illinois, and the Muslim Student Association at American University pulled out of an interfaith iftar and seder with that campus’ Jewish center after holding it accountable to the government of Israel, and accusing it of supporting “apartheid.”
This week’s global antisemitism report highlights 38 new media reports of antisemitic incidents. The total includes 13 (34.2%) from the far-right, 5 (13.2%) from the far-left, 15 (39.5%) with Islamist motivations, and 5 (13.2%) unidentifiable in nature.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
UNITED STATES
ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTER ASSAULTS NEW YORK MAN AT PALESTINIAN ‘RESISTANCE’ RALLY
By Faygie Holt
When he heard that anti-Israel protesters were going to be rallying outside Israel’s consulate in Manhattan, Matthew Greenman decided to show his support for the Jewish state. For his efforts, Greenman was called a “terrorist,” assaulted and injured in a case being investigated by the NYPD Hate Crimes Unit. Greenman said: “I was walking with my Israeli flag on my back. I turned around, and this guy made eye contact with me. He followed me and said, ‘When we’re somewhere more private, I’ve got something for you.’ I kept walking. “He started getting closer, along with his friends who got near me, and then from behind he attacked me, threw me down, punched and kicked me in the face a bunch, and then he left and said, ‘That’s what you get for being a terrorist.’” “I went to the ER, was told I have a mild concussion and a possible fracture above the eye.”
PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS CHANT “LONG LIVE THE INTIFADA,” “WE WANT ALL ‘48‘” IN FRONT OF LA ISRAELI CONSULATE
By Aaron Bandler
A group of pro-Palestinian protesters chanted anti-Israel slogans like “Long live the Intifada” and “We want all ‘48” in front the Consulate General of Israel in Los Angeles. The protest was billed as a rally to “Defend Al-Aqsa” and “Defend Gaza.” In addition to chants of “Long live the intifada” and “We don’t want no two states, we want all ’48,” the protesters also chanted “Free the people, free the land, justice is our demand, no peace on stolen land.”
WORLD NEWS
United Kingdom
‘DISGUSTING’ ANTISEMITIC AND WHITE SUPREMACIST GRAFFITI DISCOVERED IN BISHOP’S STORTFORD UNDERPASS
By Isabella McRae
Offensive graffiti has been discovered in a public underpass near Thorley Wedge Park in Bishop’s Stortford. The incident is being treated as racially or religiously aggravated criminal damage, and police enquiries are being carried out. Images show Nazi swastika symbols, graffitied in red, on the underpass. There are also the letters ‘KKK’, an apparent allusion to the white supremacist hate group, the Klu Klux Klan.
LABOUR PARTY CANDIDATE IN VALE OF GLAMORGAN SUSPENDED AFTER REFERRING TO UKRAINIAN PRESIDENT AS A “ZIONIST” AND “FASCIST”
GERMANY
PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS IN GERMANY CHANT ANTISEMITIC SLOGANS, ASSAULT JOURNALISTS AND POLICE
By Sharon Wrobel
Germany’s interior minister denounced pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Berlin, who chanted antisemitic and anti-Israel slogans, attacked police officers and harassed journalists. Protesters at pro-Palestinian rallies in Berlin, Hanover and Dortmund voiced antisemitic slurs and anti-Israel slogans, describing Israel as an “apartheid” regime, advocating violence against the Jewish state, and chanting “free, free Palestine from the river to the sea.” Videos showed participants shouting slogans like “Scheiß Jude!” (“shitty Jew”) and “strike, oh Qassam, don’t let the Zionists sleep”. Incidents of hostile outrages towards journalists at the demonstrations were also reported, prompting police intervention. One of the journalists, Peter Wilke of the German daily Bild, was escorted by police officers out of the protest after being circled by a group of participants screaming: “Du Jude! Dreckiger Jude! Drecksjude” (“dirty Jew”).
FOLLOWING ANTISEMITIC INCITEMENT AT PRO-PALESTINIAN RALLY, BERLIN POLITICIANS URGE TOUGHER POLICE CRACKDOWN
CANADA
JEWISH GROUPS, MPS DECRY TORONTO BDS RALLY TERRORISM INCITEMENT
By MICHAEL STARR
Canadian Jewish groups and Canadian parliament members criticized incitement to violence and support for the recent terrorism wave in Israel in statements made at a Toronto BDS rally. Event organizers were seen wearing shirts that said “Intifada,” and the crowd was led in chants saying, “There is only one solution, intifada, revolution” and “Long live the Intifada – Intifada, Intifada.” During the march to the Israeli consulate, organizers notified the crowd that rockets had been fired from Lebanon into Israel, which was met with calls of “Allahu Akbar!” (God is great!).
FRANCE
NEO-NAZI TAGS COVER ELECTION POSTERS IN MEIX-TIERCELIN
By lunion
The mayor of the town discovered antisemitic and homophobic tags on the electoral panels in front of the town hall. The taggers at least had the good taste to paint their swastika in brown paint, the color usually attributed to the far right, when they vandalized the electoral signs of the town. On the space devoted to the electoral display, the mayor discovered on the morning of the second round several inscriptions of neo-Nazi inspiration, with homophobic insults, and a star of David under the portrait of Emmanuel Macron. The candidate of the National Rally obviously had the support of the vandals, who twice added the words “Vive Marine”, while sparing her poster.
OTHER WORLD NEWS
CROATIA JEWS BOYCOTT WWII MEMORIAL, SAY GOVERNMENT TOLERATES PRO-NAZI SENTIMENTS
By AFP
Jews in Croatia snubbed an official commemoration for the victims of the country’s most notorious World War II death camp accusing authorities of tolerating pro-Nazi sentiments. Jews as well as ethnic Serbs and anti-fascists had boycotted the event for three consecutive years before rejoining it in 2020. At the time they said they wanted to show solidarity during the pandemic and start a conversation with authorities about lingering intolerance. The camp was run by the Nazi-allied Ustasha regime. The Ustasha persecuted and killed hundreds of thousands of ethnic Serbs, Jews, Roma and anti-fascist Croatians. The European Union country’s conservative government has faced criticism in recent years for failing to condemn the use of Ustasha slogans and historical revisionism among right-wingers.
MIDDLE EAST
IMAM ON PA TV CALLS FOR ‘DESTRUCTION OF THE TYRANNICAL JEWS’
By TOI STAFF
In a prayer that aired on Palestinian Authority TV, an imam called for “the destruction” of the Jews. The prayer was made during a Ramadan service in the Al-Ain Mosque in El-Bireh, near Ramallah Bank. “Grant us victory over the infidels,” the imam chanted. “Allah, delight us with the conquest and liberation of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Allah, make us among the first to enter, the conquerors, the worshipers, and those calling out ‘Allahu Akbar’ inside [the mosque] to You, Master of the Universe.” “Allah, delight us with the destruction of the tyrannical Jews, O Master of the Universe, and [the destruction] of their hypocritical supporters who have evil in their hearts.”
IRANIAN MEDIA OUTLETS ISSUE NEW OUTBURST OF HOLOCAUST DENIAL ON YOM HASHOAH
ON CAMPUS
RUTGERS JEWISH FRATERNITY EGGED DURING YOM HASHOAH CEREMONY FOR SECOND STRAIGHT YEAR, AFTER HOUSE TARGETED BY ANTI-ISRAEL PROTESTERS
By Dion J. Pierre
A Jewish fraternity house at Rutgers University was egged during an annual ceremony held to recite the names of Holocaust victims, days after it was targeted for antisemitic harassment by anti-Zionist protesters. The series of incidents began Friday, when a caravan of participants from a Students for Justice in Palestine rally drove up to the Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi) house, shouting antisemitic insults and spitting in their direction, fraternity members reported. Separately, on Tuesday, the house egged during a 24-hour reading of the names of Holocaust victims ahead of Yom HaShoah. It is the second year in a row that the AEPi house was egged during the ceremony.
AMERICAN UNIVERSITY: MUSLIM STUDENTS BOYCOTT INTERFAITH SEDER OVER JEWISH PARTNER’S SUPPORT FOR ISRAEL
By JTA
A Muslim student group withdrew from an interfaith seder and Iftar event to commemorate Passover and Ramadan because of its Jewish partner’s support of Israel. The Muslim Student Association at the university in Washington, D.C., cancelled its participation, citing partner Hillel’s support of Israel amid renewed clashes at Jerusalem’s Al-Aqsa mosque. “Hillel’s continued support for the state of Israel after this attack contradicts our values of human rights and justice and we are unable to participate in a co-sponsored campus event at this time,” the group said. “We stand in solidarity with Palestine,” the post continued, calling Israel “a settler-colonial and apartheid state.”
ANALYSIS & OP-EDS
STUDIES & STATISTICS
NUMBER OF ANTISEMITIC INCIDENTS SURGED IN 2021, ACCORDING TO LATEST ADL TALLY
By ASAF SHALEV
The number of antisemitic incidents recorded by the Anti-Defamation League in the United States in 2021 reached an all-time high. The 2,717 incidents identified in news articles by the ADL or reported to the ADL directly in 2021 represent a 34% increase from the 2,024 incidents of antisemitism tallied by the group in 2020. Previously, the 2,107 incidents in 2019 were the highest total since the ADL began publishing annual counts in 1979. For the second straight year, 2021 saw no fatal incidents tied to antisemitism in the United States, but the ADL counted 88 antisemitic assaults, a 167% increase from the 33 assaults in the 2020 count. The ADL also documented a surge in incidents linked to the May 2021 round of deadly clashes between Israel and Hamas, many of which made national headlines at the time.
TEL AVIV U REPORTS RECORD-HIGH GLOBAL ANTISEMITISM, LINKED TO COVID AND GAZA
By JUDAH ARI GROSS
A new Tel Aviv University study found a record-high number of reports of antisemitic activity throughout the world in 2021, much of it tied to the bloody conflict between Israel and Palestinian terror groups in the Gaza Strip in May of that year and the ongoing coronavirus pandemic. The report found that the number of antisemitic attacks nearly doubled in the United Kingdom, from 97 assaults in 2020 to 173 last year; that the number rose in France by more than a third in 2021, from 44 to 60; and that the total number of antisemitic incidents in Germany rose to its highest level in recent years, to 3,028 in 2021, compared to 2,351 in 2020. The annual report, produced by the university’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, called for major introspection as decades of efforts to curb antisemitism following the Holocaust appear to have come up short.
TORONTO POLICE: JEWS MOST TARGETED IN CITY’S HATE CRIMES IN 2021
GOVERNMENT & POLICY
BENNETT URGES UNITY, REJECTS HOLOCAUST COMPARISONS AS ISRAEL MARKS REMEMBRANCE DAY
By LUKE TRESS
Israel’s leaders warned against antisemitic rhetoric or attempts to compare the slaughter of Europe’s Jews to other atrocities, as the nation stopped to memorialize the victims of the Nazi death machine for Holocaust Remembrance Day. Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and President Isaac Herzog focused on a separate single Holocaust incident to evoke the larger, incomprehensible horrors of the Nazi genocide. Bennett rejected Holocaust comparisons, which have become common surrounding Russia’s invasion of Ukraine. “The Holocaust is an unprecedented event in human history. I take the trouble to say this because as the years pass, more and more serious events are compared to the Holocaust,” Bennett said. “But no, even the most serious wars today are not the Holocaust and are not like the Holocaust,” he said, without directly mentioning Ukraine. “No event in history, cruel as it may have been, compares to the destruction of Europe’s Jews at the hands of the Nazis and their collaborators,” Bennett said.
ANTISEMITISM ENVOYS GATHER IN JERUSALEM FOR HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY
By WJC
Dozens of global officials tasked with combating antisemitism met in Israel to continue brainstorming on how to end the world’s oldest hatred. The SECCA (Special Envoys and Coordinators Combating Antisemitism) forum was timed to coincide with Yom HaShoah. The officials came from diverse nations on six continents, as well as from key international bodies such as the United Nations Alliance of Civilizations, UNESCO, Council of Europe, the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE), and Organization of American States (OAS). In-depth conversations covered a range of topics, including the state of Ukraine’s Jewish community, Holocaust denial and distortion and the power of sport to fight hate.
HUMANITY
MUSLIM INFLUENCERS VISIT AUSCHWITZ, SEEK TO BRING TRUTH OF HOLOCAUST TO ARAB WORLD
By YAAKOV SCHWARTZ
Walking the gravel path between the faded brick barracks at the former Auschwitz concentration camp, Rawan Osman says that the first time she saw a Jew, she had a panic attack. The daughter of a Syrian father and Lebanese mother, Osman, 38, was raised in Lebanon — a stronghold of the Hezbollah terror group. She lived in Saudi Arabia and Qatar before moving to Strasbourg, France, for university in 2011. Osman is in Poland with Sharaka, a grassroots organization looking to strengthen the bond between Israel and the Arab world following the Abraham Accords. Sharaka is participating in the International March of the Living, one of the world’s largest annual Holocaust commemoration events, held on Yom Hashoah, Israel’s national Holocaust Remembrance Day, which this year falls out on April 28.
The Combat Antisemitism Movement is a global coalition engaging more than 360,000 people and 450 organizations from a diverse array of religious, political, and cultural backgrounds in the common mission of fighting the world’s oldest hatred. We act collaboratively to build a better future, free of bigotry, for Jews and all humanity.
