Nation

October 4, 2011

California leads nation in anti-Semitic incidents

By Julie Gruenbaum Fax

Tweet

Share

For the second year running, California led the nation in anti-Semitic incidents reported in the Anti-Defamation League’s (ADL) 2010 Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents. Reports of anti-Jewish vandalism, harassment and physical assaults rose 8 percent in California between 2009 and 2010, from 275 to 297 reports, reflecting a national trend of a slight increase in incidents.

Using data gathered from local law enforcement and direct reports to its 30 regional offices, the ADL documented 1,239 incidents across the country in 2010, compared to 1,211 incidents in 2009.

This was the first national increase reported since the numbers hit a record high in 2004, when the United States experienced 1,821 incidents of anti-Semitism. Since 2004, the numbers have declined incrementally each year.

Amanda Susskind, ADL’s Pacific Southwest regional director, said she doesn’t dwell too much on the numbers, but the report points to a troubling trend.

“I think we are not watching closely enough at the lowest level where this is happening, so it’s starting to bubble up in other areas,” Susskind said. “It feels to me that there is a lot of stuff going on in schools, where Jewish students and teachers are being assaulted or vandalized or harassed. I think we are seeing a higher threshold of tolerance for disrespecting the Jewish people … and it’s infiltrating the mainstream sensitivity.”

Hateful words left unchecked can create an atmosphere conducive to anti-Jewish crimes, she warned. While hate crimes are down across the state, she said, hate crimes against Jews are up. In Los Angeles County in 2009, anti-Jewish hate crimes accounted for one out of five of total hate crimes and 88 percent of hate crimes targeting religious groups, according to the most recently available Hate Crime Report of the Los Angeles County Commission on Human Relations.

An incident in the ADL Pacific Southwest Region that received international attention was the “Beat the Jew” game played by a group of students at La Quinta High School in May 2010.  The game, which was promoted through a Facebook page, involved students called “Nazis” in a car chasing a student running on foot called the “Jew.” 

Susskind said the list of incidents in California included a prevalence of name-calling — “dirty Jew,” “kike” and “f-ing Jew” — sometimes accompanied by physical threats or actual assaults. While the list included a handful of references to Israel, most of the incidents are what Susskind calls “traditional anti-Semitism.”

The report does not document anti-Semitism online, but Susskind said she sees a “correlation of acceptability” in online remarks against Jews and what happens in the real world.

In addition to calling out these incidents to raise awareness, ADL runs anti-bias programs at schools and in the workplace.

“And we’re hoping that parents will talk to their kids about these things. It is important for parents to discuss hatred and bigotry with kids, just like they discuss sex and drugs — they’re facts of life and we need to impart a strong sense of values to children,” Susskind said.

Nationally, the report included 22 physical assaults (down from 29 in 2009); 900 cases of anti-Semitic harassment, threats and events (up from 760 in 2009); and 317 cases of anti-Semitic vandalism (down from 422 in 2009).

“While we have come a long way in society as Jews have been accepted into the mainstream, America is still not immune to anti-Semitism and bigotry,” said Abraham H. Foxman, ADL national director. “The good news is that we have continued to enjoy a period of relative calm, where the overall numbers are mostly unchanged and the incidents isolated. But the bad news is that, for all our efforts to educate, to raise awareness and to legislate, anti-Jewish incidents remain a disturbing part of the American Jewish experience.”

---

Post your comment below!

Click here to return to the homepage.

COMMENTS

We welcome your feedback. Comments may not exceed 700 characters.

Privacy Policy

Your information will not be shared or sold without your consent. Get all the details.

Terms of Service

JewishJournal.com has rules for its commenting community.Get all the details.

Reminds me of good old Poland

Comment by johan on 10/04/11 at 7:01 pm

Can you say, UC Irvine?  The toleration of antisemitism there and UC Santa Cruz is the motherload of rising antisemitism throughout the state.  It’s coming from the young Muslims who are unchallenged and the leftists and liberals who have made common cause with these same Muslims. 

I, for one, am glad that the “Irvine 10” have been found guilty.  A long overdue first step.

And for all you liberals out there who still think antisemitism is in the country club republicans, move ahead 60 years and join the real world.

Comment by Grantman on 10/04/11 at 7:50 pm

Well in a state where you have so many self hating Jews aka Liberals how can you expect the “others” to not hate us.

Comment by sheila on 10/04/11 at 10:46 pm

I was about to share this alarming article and statistics on my Facebook page, but the balked when I saw the “examples of incidents” beneath the article.  How can we expect people to take these statistics seriously, when one of the top 6 incidents of vandalism that you’ve chosen to highlight is something written in CHALK? 

All anti-semitism is bad- but by choosing such a weak example of vandalism (something which can literally be washed away by RAIN) you call into question the seriousness of these statistics.

Please fix this or realize why you’ve made the article unsharable (at least for me) because you’ve reduced the seriousness of these incidents by choosing a weak example.

Comment by Gary on 10/05/11 at 7:33 am

The Evangelical Christian kids who made my life miserable between in Santa Clarita, CA learned their anti-Semitism from their parents.  Recently, all of the local school boards refused to charter a non-sectarian, non-profit Charter School because it would offer Hebrew as one of its courses.  The irony is that Disney, which has a substantial Jewish employee and actor/contractor population, is going to build a huge new studio/office complex in Placerita Canyon in Santa Clarita.  Imagine the horror Jewish Disney employees will face if they are transferred from Burbank, move their families to this vehemently anti-Semitic suburb, and only then discover the ugliness their children will face.

Comment by Vani on 10/05/11 at 1:25 pm

Anti-semites are just people who hate everyone. Because they are cowards, they choose groups of people that they beleive cannot or won’t fight back, like children, Jews, blacks, mexicans, women, gays, moslems, native americans, etc.. These groups include law enforcement officers and whole law enforcement agencies and the governments that employ them.

Christians have been kept in poverty by their religions and they needed some group to blame for their condition, so they blame the rich Jews, the blacks, women and mexicans for taking their jobs and anyone else other than their religions that won’t of can’t fight back.

Comment by joybook on 10/05/11 at 3:51 pm

continued

Only when Jews become the leaders and recruit all of these groups to fight the bigots will it ever stop.

Prejudice is just the selective process of who one likes and one dislikes. Bigotry is when someone acts against those they are prejudiced against.

Comment by joybook on 10/05/11 at 3:52 pm

Post a Comment

Name:
Email:

Type the word you see below:

Comment:

Remember my personal information

Notify me of follow-up comments?