Amid Terror Wave in Israel, April Sees Sharp Rise in Islamist Antisemitism Worldwide, CAM Data Shows

The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) Information Hub tracked a total of 153 antisemitic incidents reported in the media worldwide in April 2022, a 2.7% increase from April 2021, marking a daily average of 5.1 incidents.

CAM’s Monthly Antisemitism Report classifies incidents of Jew-hatred (including physical assault, verbal harassment, vandalism, and hate speech) by the ideologies of the perpetrators.

Of April’s incidents, 43.8% (67) had far-right motives (compared to a 44.15% share of total in all of 2021), while 27.5% (42) had Islamist motives (compared to 19.05% share of total in all of 2021), and 9.8% (15) had far-left motives (compared to 19.14% in all of 2021). The remainder — 19.0% (29) — had unidentifiable motives (compared to 17.65% in 2021).

The month saw a 121.1% year-to-year increase in incidents of Islamist antisemitism, and 57.0% and 4.3% year-to-year decreases in incidents of far-left and far-right antisemitism, respectively, were recorded.

Also in April, CAM monitored 19 physical attacks against Jews, a 111.1% rise, year-to-year, as well as 49 incidents of antisemitic vandalism, a 2.1% increase, year-to-year.

Overall, CAM has tracked 723 antisemitic incidents in the media in the first four months of 2022, marking a daily average of 6.0 antisemitic incidents, compared to 665 during the same period in 2021, for an average of 5.5 antisemitic incidents per day, representing an almost 9% increase. In all of 2021, CAM tracked an average of 6.1 antisemitic incidents reported in the media per day.

In Israel, a wave of terrorist attacks — perpetrated by Palestinian and Israeli Arab assailants and fueled by antisemitic incitement — has left 19 people dead across the country over the past seven weeks.

Meanwhile, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov claimed in a television interview that Nazi leader Adolf Hitler “had Jewish blood” and that the “biggest antisemites were Jewish” — the latest troubling example of distortion and trivialization of the Holocaust in public discourse about the ongoing war in Ukraine.

Also, a series of new reports published ahead of Yom HaShoah, Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, painted a disturbing picture of rising antisemitism worldwide less than eight decades after the Nazi genocide of the Jewish people.

An annual study released by Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of European Jewry attributed the global surge of antisemitic incidents to “the strengthening in some countries of the radical populist right and the anti-Zionist radical left.”

There were nine adoptions of the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism in April — by the U.S. states of Alaska, Arizona, and Ohio, as well as the District of Columbia; University of Pittsburgh (Student Government); University of Pittsburgh (Administration); University of Colorado – Colorado Springs (Student Government); City of  Glen Eira, Australia; and European Evangelical Alliance.

The full monthly report can be viewed here.

For more information on CAM’s antisemitism incidents data, which is collected on a weekly basis, visit: combatantisemitism.org/newsletters