ADL: Reports of anti-Semitism reach record high in US amid Israel-Hamas war

It said this figure represents an increase of more than 200% compared to the same period last year and is also the highest number of incidents the ADL has ever recorded in a single year. The organization began tracking such incidents in 1979.

The ADL released the report to mark the grim start to the year of the Israel-Hamas war, which began with the Iranian proxy militia’s bloody attack on Israel in which 1,200 Israelis were killed and another 251 others kidnapped.

“Today we mourn the victims of the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, which marks one year since the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. From that day on, Jewish Americans have not had a single moment of peace,” said ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt. “Instead, we have seen a shocking number of anti-Semitic threats and calls for more violence against Israelis and Jews everywhere.”

During the war, reports of hate crimes and bias complaints against Jews, Muslims and Arabs skyrocketed.

A breakdown of reports collected by ADL found that in the United States there were 8,015 incidents of verbal or written harassment of Jews, more than 1,840 incidents of vandalism, and more than 150 incidents of physical assault.

The report added that at least 1,200 of the incidents occurred on university campuses, where violent pro-Palestinian protests had taken place after the war broke out.

The Council of American-Islamic Relations, the largest Muslim civil rights and advocacy organization in the United States, said it received more than 3,578 anti-Islam, Palestinian, Arab and Muslim complaints in the first three months of the war. This represents an increase of 178% compared to the same period last year.

An additional 4,951 such complaints were documented from January to June, an increase of 69% compared to the same period in 2023.

According to Gaza’s Ministry of Health, Israel responded to the October 7, 2023 attack with a full-scale assault on Gaza, killing at least 41,870 Palestinians and wounding more than 97,000 others in the enclave.

It has also stepped up its attacks on the Iran-backed Hezbollah in Lebanon since late last month, killing more than 1,000 people, according to local health authorities.