Antisemitic incidents in US hit all-time high, Anti-Defamation League report shows
NEW YORK CITY (WABC) -- The Anti-Defamation League released its annual audit Tuesday of antisemitic incidents in the United States.
The group says there were nearly 9,000 incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism in 2023.
That's a new all-time high and a 140% increase over the previous year.
More than 5,000 of those incidents occurred after the October 7th Hamas attack on Israel.
According to the ADL Center on Extremism, incidents increased in all three categories: harassment surged by 184%; vandalism rose 69%; and physical assaults jumped by 45%.
New York and New Jersey were among the top four states with the most incidents reported, with California being number one.
The report's release comes one day after hate graffiti was found scrawled against a fence shared by neighbors in Nassau County.
It also comes amid all-time high tensions in the Middle East following Iran's missile attack against Israel over the weekend.
"Antisemitism is nothing short of a national emergency, a five-alarm fire that is still raging across the country and in our local communities and campuses," said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO. "Jewish Americans are being targeted for who they are at school, at work, on the street, in Jewish institutions and even at home. This crisis demands immediate action from every sector of society and every state in the union. We need every governor to develop and put in place a comprehensive strategy to fight antisemitism, just as the administration has done at the national level."
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