The CEO of the Anti-Defamation League said in an appearance on MSNBC that anti-Semitism has increased by as much as 388 percent since Hamas’ barbaric attack on Israel that began on October 7.
Jonathan Greenblatt, who is also director of the advocacy group, told The Sunday Show that his group has seen attacks on everyday businesses run by Jewish people, in addition to attacks on individuals and places of worship.
“I’m not talking about stores that produce IDF (Israel Defense Forces) T-shirts; “I’m talking about a coffee shop on Long Island, an ice cream parlor in the Bay Area, a restaurant in Chicago,” he said.
‘Anti-Semitism has intensified and increased. We’ve seen it normalized, both from the far right and the far left,” Greenblatt added.
Greenblatt also raised the issue of the spate of anti-Semitic incidents that have occurred on campuses of Ivy-League colleges, including Harvard and Cornell.
In October, a health food store in Montauk, Long Island, was vandalized with swastikas
The same month, a group of teenagers pelted a Jewish man with coins, in what authorities called an anti-Semitic incident.
After a record number of anti-Semitic incidents at Columbia University, the school launched a ‘Task Force on Anti-Semitism’
The ADL Center on Extremism said preliminary data shows 312 anti-Semitic incidents were reported in the U.S. between Oct. 7 and 23, including harassment, vandalism and assault.
About 190 of these were directly related to the war between Israel and Hamas.
Examples cited by ADL include alleged physical violence; violent online messages, especially on messaging platform Telegram; and meetings where ‘ADL found explicit or strong implicit support for Hamas and/or violence against Jews in Israel.’
Greenblatt’s words come as Oscar winner Jon Voight was forced to condemn his own daughter, Angelina Jolie, for spreading what he called “lies” about Israel’s attack on Gaza.
During the same period of 2022, ADL recorded 64 U.S. anti-Semitic incidents, four of which were related to Israel.
Anti-Semitism was already on the rise in the US before the war. Nearly 3,700 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in 2022, more than in any year since ADL began tracking the issue in 1979.
Jonathan Greenblatt says anti-Semitic incidents are on the rise
“When conflict erupts in Israel, anti-Semitic incidents quickly follow in the US and worldwide,” Greenblatt said last month.
“It is incumbent on all leaders, from political leaders to CEOs to university presidents, to strongly and unequivocally condemn anti-Semitism and terrorism,” he also said at the time.
Last week, the FBI announced that agents were investigating a Cornell University message board after vicious anti-Semitic threats were made against Jewish students.
The Ithaca, New York-based Ivy Institute has already seen anti-Semitic graffiti on its walls and a professor was forced to take a leave of absence after calling the attacks “exciting” and “energetic.”
Authorities investigated the school’s Center for Jewish Life on Sunday evening after disgusting anti-Jewish threats were discovered online.
Cornell President Martha E. Pollack wrote a letter to students announcing that she had contacted the FBI about “a possible hate crime.”
Patrick Dai, a junior engineering student at Cornell originally from Pittsford, New York, was arrested today, October 31, on a federal criminal complaint charging him with posting threats to kill or injure another person via interstate communications, according to the Ministry of Justice.
The charge against him could carry a sentence of five years in prison, three years of supervised release and a $250,000 fine.
Columbia University, another under-fire college in New York, launched a “Task Force on Antisemitism” to tackle the “terribly resilient form of hate” after a record number of Jewish-related attacks and harassment on campuses across the country.
Among several messages left on Cornell’s Greekrank page — a forum intended for fraternity and sorority reviews — were messages headlined “Eliminate Jewish Life from the Cornell Campus” or “Israel Deserved 10/7.”
Cornell student Patrick Dai was brought into federal court in Syracuse in chains Wednesday morning after he admitted making horrific threats against Jews after FBI agents traced his IP address to campus and his hometown
The communities of Columbia, Barnard and Teachers College announced the creation of the Task Force on Antisemitism in a letter addressed to students and faculty on Wednesday afternoon.
The task force was created to “enhance the university’s ability to tackle this age-old, but terribly resilient form of hate.”
On October 27, a group of teenagers meets are included throwing coins at a Jewish man in the Union Square Park area of Manhattan. A week earlier, there was a Jewish woman in the Big Apple beaten to the face telling her that he simply did it because of her religion.
During the same period, a Las Vegas man, John Anthony Miller, was arrested and charged with threatening to assault, kidnap, or kill Jewish Senator Jack Rosen after he allegedly left her a voicemail threatening to “finish make what Hitler started’.
Miller went on to threaten the Nevada senator’s family and appeared at a Las Vegas courthouse, suggesting he was there to see Rosen, the filing claims.
He was arrested Thursday before appearing in federal court Friday, charged with threatening a federal official.
Rosen told reporters on Capitol Hill, “I have complete confidence in our U.S. attorney, the Department of Justice, that they will take care of the situation.”
Also last week, 22 Democrats voted against a resolution condemning growing anti-Semitism and support for the Iranian-backed terrorist group Hamas on college campuses.
Still, the resolution passed overwhelmingly, with 213 Republican votes and 183 Democrats, including Squad members Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Rashida Tlaib.
One Republican – Rep. Thomas Massie, Kentucky – voted no, citing free speech concerns.