Entrenched hatred:
AntiSemitism continues to be one of the most pervasive forms of bigotry practiced throughout the United States.
NEW YORK — Swastikas scrawled into Jewish students’ notebooks. Headstones toppled and desecrated by vandals at Jewish cemeteries. Jews falsely blamed for challenges facing the nation.
The shooting rampage that killed 11 people at Pittsburgh’s Tree of Life Synagogue on Saturday is being decried as the deadliest attack on Jews in U.S. history, allegedly carried out by an anti-Semitic gunman. The carnage, however unprecedented, is not an aberration.
Year after year, decade after decade, anti-Semitism proves to be among the most entrenched and pervasive forms of hatred and bigotry in the United States.
Jews make up only about 2 percent of the U.S. population, but in annual FBI data they repeatedly account for more than half of the Americans targeted by hate crimes committed due to religious bias. The AntiDefamation League identified 1,986 anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. in 2017, up from 1,267 in 2016, and also reported a major increase in anti-Semitic online harassment.
Anti-Semitism surfaces often in the research conducted by the Southern Poverty Law Center, which tracks various U.S. hate groups, including neo-Nazis, white nationalists, skinheads and others.
“They’re all anti-Semites — that’s the tie that binds them,” said Heidi Beirich, director of the center’s Intelligence Project. “They believe Jews are pulling the strings behind bad things happening in this country.”
According to the AntiDefamation League, antiSemitic incidents on college and university campuses in the U.S. nearly doubled in 2017, rising to 204 from 108 in 2016. At K-12 schools, 457 antiSemitic incidents were reported, including swastika graffiti and playground bullying.
In a separate report, released last week, the ADL said far-right extremists have ramped up an intimidating wave of anti-Semitic online harassment against Jewish journalists, political candidates and others ahead of the Nov. 6 midterm elections.