The ADL Reports Show Antisemitism in US Rising over 200%

Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has released a new repoort showing that antisemitic incidents in the U.S. rose over 200% following the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in Israel as compared to the same period the year before. 

From the ADL Center on Extremism was recorded over 10,000 antisemitic incidents following the Hamas terrorist attack in Israel – the most recorded in any single year since the group started tracking them in 1979. In the year prior to Oct. 7, the center recorded 3,325 incidents. 

"Today, we mourn the victims of the Oct. 7 Hamas attack in Israel, marking one year since the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust," Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL CEO, said in a press release alongside the report’s publication. 

"From that day on, Jewish Americans haven’t had a single moment of respite," Greenblatt said. "Instead, we’ve faced a shocking number of antisemitic threats and experienced calls for more violence against Israelis and Jews everywhere."

Of the roughly 10,000 incidents recorded, the ADL broke them down into three different types: Over 8,000 verbal or written harassment, over 1,840 incidents of vandalism and over 150 physical assaults. 

Around 12% of these incidents occurred on college campuses compared to around 200 incidents in the same period in the previous year.

 Around 20% of those incidents occurred at "Jewish institutions," which includes synagogues and Jewish centers, but around 30% of the incidents occurred during anti-Israel rallies. The ADL did not clarify how much overlap it found among these different groupings. 

However, the group did clarify that it recorded 8,873 antisemitic incidents in 2023 alone, marking a 140% increase from the previous year, and that it will have finalized figures in 2025 as it continues to survey partners, law enforcement and victims – from which it expects the figure to continue rising. 

Experts and watchdog groups have raised the alarm over the increasing number of antisemitic incidents, not just in the U.S. but in Europe as well: The Community Security Trust in the United Kingdom reported in March 2024 that it recorded at least 2,093 antisemitic incidents across the country between Oct. 7 and Dec. 13, 2023. 

Police make an arrest as they face-off with anti-Israel students after destroying part of the encampment barricade on the campus of the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) in Los Angeles, California, early on May 2, 2024. Police deployed a heavy presence on US university campuses on May 1 after forcibly clearing away some weeks-long protests against Israel. (Etienne Laurent / AFP / Getty)

The group called it the "highest-ever total reported" across a roughly two-month period since it started recording such incidents in 1984. 

"I think people are feeling tense and nervous, particularly with marches taking place every Saturday," Jake Wallis Simons, editor-in-chief of the London-based Jewish Chronicle, told Fox News Digital from England at the time. 

On Saturday, thousands marched against Israel in London with observers complaining of the large amount of antisemitic imagery and slogans on display at the protests.

Canada has also seen a massive spike in incidents, focused around Jewish institutions, including schools, community centers and synagogues, as well as several of the country's universities. 

In a statement on X, Israel's Consul General to Montréal Paul Hirschorn warned, "Montréal is now ranked one of the most dangerous places in the world to be visibly Jewish. 9 times Jewish community buildings have been shot at or petrol bombed - synagogues, schools, community centers. Just this week people were identified with petrol-bombs near synagogues (and fortunately prevented from perpetrating what they had planned). The authorities released them to go home. I guess they said they would behave themselves."

"Statistically, hate crimes in Canada have increased north of 132%, with the vast majority of those crimes targeting the Jewish community," Casey Babb, who teaches courses on terrorism and international security at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs in Ottawa, told Fox News Digital earlier this year. 

"Indeed, this may be the most antisemitic time in our country's history," Babb said. "I'd go as far as suggesting Canada, for a variety of reasons, has become one of the most hostile nations in the West for Jews."