California has witnessed a 40% increase in antisemitic hate incidents over the past five years despite a 12% decrease in such incidents in 2020, according to an annual report released by the Anti-Defamation League.
The national organization released its “2020 ADL Audit of Antisemitic Incidents” Tuesday, April 27, the second anniversary of a shooting at the Chabad of Poway, where a self-proclaimed white supremacist fired shots inside the synagogue on the last day of the Jewish Passover holiday, killing one and wounding three others, including the rabbi.
The ADL’s report found antisemitic incidents trending high nationwide and in California despite coronavirus-related lockdowns in 2020. While antisemitic incidents declined nationally by 4% in 2020 after hitting an all-time high in 2019, last year was the third-highest year for incidents against American Jews since ADL started tracking such events in 1979.
For the first time since 2017, no antisemitic fatalities were reported last year in the United States. While the pandemic may have driven down acts of vandalism and assault, which declined 18% and 49% respectively, incidents of antisemitic harassment, particularly over video-conferencing platforms such as Zoom, increased 10% in 2020.
California, which was third in the nation for the highest number of antisemitic incidents next to New York and New Jersey, also reported the fourth-highest total of antisemitic incidents ever statewide in 2020 since 1998.
Despite some declines in the number of incidents, Jeffrey Abrams, ADL regional director in Los Angeles, said it’s important to not lose sight of the big picture, which shows that antisemitic incidents continue to trend high, even in a year when most people stayed home because of a global pandemic.
“We also saw this year so many incidents of antisemitic Zoombombing, where Zoom became the new battleground for hatred,” Abrams said, adding that synagogues and Jewish schools saw Shabbat services and Torah classes disrupted with displays of swastikas or Hitler’s name.
Here is a compilation of some of the types of antisemitic incidents reported across Southern California:
• In April, a Woodland Hills synagogue’s Shabbat service on Zoom was disrupted by an unknown person who drew swastikas on the digital prayer book.
• In May, a resident in Riverside County displayed a swastika on their car to harass Jewish neighbors.
• In August, members of the Goyim Defense League, a group of antisemitic provocateurs, distributed antisemitic and fake Black Lives Matter fliers around a predominantly Black community in Los Angeles. They also hung banners on a freeway overpass that read: “Honk if you know … the Jews want a race war.”
• In October, during a parking dispute in Los Angeles, a Jewish person was spat on and told: “You Hasidic Jews always break the law.”
• In Orange County, an unknown person or group distributed conspiratorial fliers with antisemitic tropes about COVID-19. Elsewhere in the county, an apartment building with a number of Holocaust survivors was vandalized with swastika drawings.
Antisemitic incidents on school and college campuses were also “alarmingly high” before schools closed down in March 2020 due to the pandemic, said Jonathan Greenblatt, ADL’s CEO. As the pandemic surged across the country, so did antisemitic conspiracy theories, he said.
“These conspiracy theories accused Jews of inventing or bioengineering the virus, spreading the virus, that the Jewish state was profiting off the vaccines — all of it was ugly — and derived from long-standing Jewish tropes,” Greenblatt said.
Greenblatt said it is important that people speak out against hate when they see or hear it.
“We need our political leaders to do the same,” he said. “We need people in positions of authority, from the president of the United States to the school board president, to say out loud that there is no place for hate.”
He said it is also the ADL’s prerogative to stand up for other groups that are being targeted by hate, especially African Americans and Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders who have experienced a surge in hate crimes and hate incidents targeting their members since early 2020.
“It’s important to show strength and speak up not just for your community, but when other groups are being affected as well,” he said. “America won’t be safe for Jews unless it is safe for all people.”
