Anti-Semitic incidents in NM on the rise
ADL audit: Reports in state up from 7 in 2015 to 18
Anti-Semitic incidents in New Mexico reported to the Anti-Defamation League have more than doubled since 2015, according to the ADL’s annual national Audit of Anti Semitic Incidents released Monday.
The number of incidents rose from seven total in 2015 to 18, which includes 11 in 2016 and seven in the first quarter of 2017, said ADL New Mexico Regional Director Suki Halevi.
There was also a doubling at the national level, with anti-Semitic bullying and vandalism at nondenominational K-12 schools, according to the ADL. Overall, incidents in the United States surged more than one-third in 2016 and have jumped 86 percent in the first quarter of 2017.
Among the 18 reported incidents in New Mexico were two bomb threats at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Albuquerque, Halevi said. Other local incidents involved verbal harassment of Jews, cyber-threats of violence against Jews, anti-Semitic graffiti, an anti-Semitic radio broadcast in Santa Fe, and anti-Semitic bullying and slurs in schools, she said.
“Most significant is we’re seeing things that we didn’t see before,” she said. In November, an Albuquerque woman with a Hillary Clinton sticker on her car was in the parking lot of a gym when she saw someone spitting on the car’s trunk. She confronted the offender, who stated that she looks like a Jew and she should “get ready for your next exodus” because “we’re about to clean out this country.”
The 2016 presidential election and the heightened political atmosphere played a role in the increase, Halevi said.
The annual audit highlighted political graffiti posted in May 2016 in Denver that read: “Kill the Jews, Vote Trump.” In November, a St. Petersburg, Fla., man was threatened by someone who told him “Trump is going to finish what Hitler started.”
In the months leading up to the election, ADL Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Greenblatt commented: “I’m not saying that Donald Trump is a racist or anti-Semite, but the racists and anti-Semites have come out of the woodwork during this political season to support him.”
He further said that candidate Trump’s failure to quickly and decisively condemn white supremacists had mainstreamed their racist
views and emboldened them. The ADL estimated that 2.6 million tweets from account holders posted from August 2015 to July 2016 contained antiSemitic language. Nearly 20,000 of those tweets were directed at journalists.
Trump eventually released a terse statement saying, “AntiSemitism has no place in our society, which needs to be united, not divided.”
In Albuquerque, swift response to the JCC bomb threats by the community at large, elected officials, school administrators and religious leaders, including those from the Islamic Center of New Mexico, was “extremely important,” said Halevi. “That’s what tells the community and the people spreading this hate that this is not who we are. This is not New Mexico.”