Anti-Semitism
From the Anti-Defamation League:
Throughout each year, ADL’s (Anti-Defamation League) Center on Extremism tracks incidents of anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism and assault in the United States. Since 1979, we have published this information in an annual Audit of Anti-Semitic Incidents.
- In 2018 ADL recorded 1,879 anti-Semitic incidents in the United States.
- 2018 included the deadliest attack on Jews in the history of the U.S.: The massacre of 11 Jewish worshippers, and an additional two more injured, at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh by a white supremacist in October. The Pittsburgh attack was one of 39 reported physical assaults on Jewish individuals in 2018, a 105% increase over 2017. A total of 59 individuals were victims of assault, not including the police officers injured at the Tree of Life Synagogue.
- Of the 1,879 incidents in 2018, 1,066 were cases of harassment, an increase of 5% from 2017; and 774 were cases of vandalism, a decrease of 19% from 952 in 2017.
- In 2018, ADL recorded 249 anti-Semitic incidents attributed to known extremist groups or individuals inspired by extremist ideology. This represents 13% of the total number of incidents and is the highest level of anti-Semitic incidents with known connections to extremist individuals or groups since 2004. These incidents were the result of an anti-Semitic fliering campaign and of a series of robocalls perpetrated by a neo-Nazi. Nearly half of the incidents of harassment targeting Jewish institutions were the work of known white supremacists or extremists.
- K-12 schools, as well as colleges and universities, continue to be the scenes of significant numbers of anti-Semitic incidents. ADL recorded 344 incidents at K-12 non-Jewish schools in 2018 (down from 457 in 2017), and 201 incidents at colleges and universities (down from 204 in 2017).
- In 2018 there were 265 reported incidents at Jewish institutions such as synagogues, Jewish community centers and Jewish schools, a decrease of 23% from the previous year, but still markedly higher than the 170 incidents reported in 2016.
- ADL has tracked anti-Semitic incidents for the past four decades and in 2018 recorded the third-highest number of incidents. The total of 2018 incidents decreased by 5% from the 1,986 incidents ADL recorded in 2017. The 2018 total is 48% higher than the number of incidents in 2016 and 99% higher than in 2015.
- ADL has included a comprehensive set of policy recommendations for civil society, governmental and technology sector leaders to help them in the fight against the scourge of anti-Semitism, at the end of the report. These include recommendations aimed at assessing and combating the rise of online anti-Semitism, which is not tracked in this report other than with regard to specific reported instances of direct targeting, but which ADL has been analyzing in other reports.
- The complete dataset of anti-Semitic incidents for 2016-2018 is available on ADL’s H.E.A.T. Map, an interactive online tool that allows users to geographically chart anti-Semitic incidents and extremist activity nationally and regionally. Note that some details have been removed from the incident listings to ensure the privacy of victims.
