10,000 Antisemitic Incidents Targeted Jews After Oct. 7, ADL Report Says

A punishing wave of over 10,000 antisemitic incidents has hit the American Jewish community since Oct. 7, according to a new report published by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) Center on Extremism on the first anniversary of Hamas’ massacre across southern Israel.

The report, which tracked antisemitic incidents that occurred between Oct. 7 2023-Sept. 24, 2024, showed a 200 percent increase from the previous year, noting that 30 percent of them took place on college campuses and another 12 percent happened during anti-Israel protests. Another 20 percent targeted Jewish institutions, including nonprofit organizations and houses of worship. Of these, 50 percent were bomb threats.

“We mourn the victims of the Oct. 7 attack in Israel, marking one year since the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust,” ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement accompanying the report. “From that day on, Jewish Americans haven’t had a single moment of respite. Instead, we’ve faced a shocking number of antisemitic threats and experienced calls for more violence against Israelis and Jews everywhere.”

As The Algemeiner has previously reported, antisemitism in the US has surged to unprecedented levels.

From Jan. 2023 to Dec. 2023, the ADL recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents — an average of 24 every day — across the US, amounting to a year unlike any experienced by the American Jewish community since the organization began tracking such data on antisemitic outrages in 1979. Incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assault all spiked by double and triple digits, with California, New York, New Jersey, Florida, and Massachusetts accounting for nearly half, or 48 percent, of all that occurred.

Breaking down the numbers, the ADL found a dramatic rise in the targeting of Jewish institutions such as synagogues, community centers, and schools, with 1,987 such incidents taking place in 2023 — a 237 percent increase which included over a thousand fake bomb threats, also known as “swattings.”

Other figures were equally staggering, with assaults and vandalism rising by 45 percent and 69 percent, respectively, while harassment soared by 184 percent. Antisemitic incidents on college campuses, which The Algemeiner has continued to cover extensively, rose 321 percent, disrupting the studies of Jewish students and leaving them uncertain about the fate of the American Jewish community.

The last quarter of the year proved most injurious, the ADL noted, explaining that after Hamas’ Oct. 7 massacre across southern Israel, 5,204 antisemitic incidents rocked the Jewish community. Across the political spectrum, from white supremacists on the far right to ostensibly left-wing Ivy League universities, antisemites emerged to express solidarity with the Hamas terror group, spread antisemitic tropes and blood libels, and openly call for a genocide of the Jewish people in Israel.

Such incidents occurred throughout the US. In California, an elderly Jewish man was killed when an anti-Zionist professor employed by a local community college allegedly pushed him during an argument. At Cornell University in upstate New York, a student threatened to rape and kill Jewish female students and “shoot up” the campus’ Hillel center. In a suburb outside Cleveland, Ohio, a group of vandals desecrated graves at a Jewish cemetery. At Harvard University, America’s oldest and, arguably, most prestigious university, a faculty group shared an antisemitic cartoon depicting a left-hand tattooed with a Star of David dangling two men of color from a noose.

Most recently, the ADL reported a “staggering” 477 percent increase in anti-Zionist activity on college campuses involving assault, vandalism, and other phenomena. The report — titled “Anti-Israel Activism on US Campuses, 2023-2024” — painted a bleak picture of America’s higher education system poisoned by political extremism and hate.

“As the year progressed, Jewish students and Jewish groups on campus came under unrelenting scrutiny for any association, actual or perceived, with Israel or Zionism,” it says. “This often led to the harassment of Jewish members of campus communities and vandalism of Jewish institutions. In some cases, it led to assault. These developments were underpinned by a steady stream of rhetoric from anti-Israel activists expressing explicit support for US designated terrorists organizations, such as Hamas, the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) and others.”

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.

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