Anti-Semitic incidents have reached levels unseen in recent years, report says

The number of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. skyrocketed by 86 percent in the first three months of the year, according to a report released Monday by a prominent Jewish civil rights organization.

The Anti-Defamation League’s audit of antiSemitic events counted 541 anti-Semitic attacks and threats against Americans in the first quarter of the year, a dramatic increase over the same period last year.

The incidents followed an overall 34 percent increase in anti-Semitic assaults, vandalism and harassment last year compared with 2015, according to the report.

The jump in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States came against an overall drop in such incidents worldwide, according to a report issued Sunday by the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University.

The Kantor report, which surveyed about 40 countries, said incidents of anti-Semitism dropped 12 percent globally. In France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish community, reports of anti-Semitic acts dropped 61 percent. However, the English-speaking world in general bucked the trend, with increases in Britain, Australia and, especially, the United States. The report said anti-Semitic incidents on U.S. college campuses rose by 45 percent.

Although the trend line was down overall worldwide, the report pointed with alarm to a “continuation of the widespread increase, sometimes dramatic, in verbal and visual antiSemitism on social media and during demonstrations ... that cannot be quantified.”

According to the ADL report, this year’s numbers in the U.S. were part of an uptick that began before the new year. Close to onethird of the 1,266 incidents logged last year happened in November and December.

“It’s really incredibly alarming,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the New York-based civil rights group, which pulls data from law enforcement, victims and local Jewish organizations to compile its annual audit. “What’s most concerning is the fact that the numbers have accelerated over the past five months.”

Greenblatt attributed the increases to several factors.

Part of this year’s growth, he said, was the 161 hoax bomb threats against Jewish community centers and other Jewish institutions, including the ADL itself. Two men — an American in St. Louis and a dual citizen Israeli American in Israel — have been arrested and charged separately with committing the crimes. But those threats, which began in January, count for less than a third of the incidents this year.