To sign up for Meridian’s Free Newsletter, please CLICK HERE.
Image via Deseret News.
Violent anti-Semitic attacks in the U.S. rose 50 percent last year. According to the Anti-Defamation League, there were a total of 56 against Jewish victims.
“And we know that for every incident reported, there’s likely another that goes unreported,” said Jonathan A. Greenblatt, CEO of the ADL, which produced the study and calls the trend “very concerning.”
The increase occurred as the total number of anti-Semitic incidents — including physical and verbal assaults and vandalism — remained fairly steady, rising 3 percent from 2014.
Examples of anti-Semitic assaults in 2015 include:
— An assailant in Boca Raton, Fla., shouted, “Jews should go back to Auschwitz” and struck a rabbinical student, who fell to the pavement.
— Two people walking home from synagogue in Brooklyn were pelted with eggs by four perpetrators shouting: “You f—— Jews. I am going to kill you.”
— Two assailants approached a high school student wearing a yarmulke in Denver and yelled, “Hey kike, when I talk to you, you talk back,” and threw a large rock that hit the victim on the back.
Overall the number of anti-Semitic incidents is “historically low,” according to the ADL, which was founded to combat anti-Semitism and other bigotry, and started tracking anti-Semitic incidents in 1979.
The peak since then was in 2006, when 1,554 incidents were reported. The general trend since then has been a decline. And as in past years, more anti-Semitic incidents occurred in states with larger Jewish populations. New York and California again led the list, followed by New Jersey, Florida and Massachusetts.
To read the full article, click here.
