ADL: Mass. set new record for antisemitic incidents in 2024 | John L. Micek
Some records and record-breaking events are worth celebrating.
Consider John Korir, of Kenya, who raced to victory in Monday's Boston Marathon. His brother, Wesley, won in 2012. That makes them the first siblings to ever win the nation's premier road race.
And there's Sharon Lokedi, also of Kenya, who won the women's race and set a new course record in the doing of it.
She finished ahead of Hellen Obiri, the defending women's champ , who was looking to become the first woman to three-peat at the Marathon since 1999, CBS News reported.
Then there are the records you wish would remain unbroken: Like the fact that 2024 marked the fifth straight year that there were more antisemitic incidents in New England than the year before, shattering the previous year's record.
That ignominious data point comes from the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) New England's latest Audit of Antisemitic Incidents , an annual audit of the hate that continues to thrive in our midst.
The civil rights group recorded 638 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism across the five-state New England region in 2024, including Maine, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Rhode Island and Vermont.
That's up from the 2023 tally of 623 incidents, according to the ADL.
The number of antisemitic incidents across New England has risen steadily since 2020, when the ADL recorded 109 such incidents.
That increase is a "stark reminder that antisemitism continues to impact our communities," Samantha Joseph, the group's regional director, said in a statement.
The rise of attacks against Orthodox Jews was "particularly concerning," Joseph said, noting that the "alarming manifestations of antisemitism in 2024 instill fear and are reminders that much work remains to be done."
So, where does Massachusetts fall in all this? Nowhere good.
The Bay State charted 438 antisemitic incidents last year, the fifth-highest nationwide behind New York (1,437), California (1,345), New Jersey (719) and Pennsylvania (465).
That's a 188% increase from the 152 incidents recorded in 2022. And it's effectively unchanged from the 439 that were recorded in 2023, according to the ADL's data.
That 2024 tally for Massachusetts breaks down to 276 reported incidents of harassment, 157 incidents of vandalism (an 11% increase from the 141 incidents in 2023), and five assaults.
Of the state's 351 cities and towns, 108 saw at least one antisemitic incident, according to the report. Boston logged 96 such incidents last year, according to the report.
The ADL recorded 12 cases where Orthodox Jews were specifically targeted for harassment, compared to the four incidents across the five-state region in 2023.
The majority — 10 of them — took place in Massachusetts, the civil rights group said.
One particularly graphic example included a man yelling at a Jewish child — "You are a Jew, [expletive] you" — while he shopped with his mother at a kosher grocery store, the civil rights group said.
And a lot of those incidents took place in settings where people are supposed to be learning how to appreciate and celebrate their differences: New England's college campuses.
They ranged from someone replacing the Star of David on an Israeli flag with a swastika at Smith College to a Berklee College of Music student telling a classmate that "Jews belong in the oven."
Then there were the threatening emails sent to Jewish student organizations at Brown University and the Rhode Island School of Design.
All told, the region's college campuses saw 151 incidents of antisemitism last year, up from 81 in 2023 and way up from the 15 reported in 2022.
Taken together, that's an 86% year-over-year increase on college campuses between 2023 and 2024.
The ADL was quick to point out that it was not trying to conflate general criticism of Israel or anti-Israel activism with antisemitism. And "legitimate political protest, support for Palestinian rights or expressions of opposition to Israeli policies" was not included in its audit.
Still, this increase came amid campus protests and arrests tied to Israel's prosecution of its war against the terrorist group Hamas, which is dragging into its third year.
But, really, no place was safe. The ADL reported antisemitic incidents in K-12 public schools, public parks, private businesses and homes.
And there was the terror of striking the region's Jewish population in their own safe spaces: schools, community centers and synagogues.
In October 2023, for instance, two worshippers in Springfield who had to leave a rideshare early after they were harangued for praying in a "terrorist Israel institution," according to the report.
Antisemitism commissions at the state and federal levels that are trying to tackle the issue with varying levels of success.
The former has held informational hearings, while critics say the latter is a barely covert effort to undermine the rule of law and to undermine academic freedom.
No one's questioning that there's a problem. You don't have to look any further than the headlines to find evidence of that.
The new data drop comes just about two weeks after the nation's antisemitism problem was thrust into the headlines once more with news that a lone attacker had set fire to the official residence of Pennsylvania's governor.
State Police ushered Democratic Gov. Josh Shapiro, who is Jewish, his family and guests out of the neo-Georgian building in the state capital of Harrisburg. The night before, they had celebrated Passover.
Shapiro, a former state attorney general, has taken heat for his support for Israel, with some branding him "Genocide Josh."
As MSNBC columnist Michael A. Cohen has pointed out, blaming Shapiro for the actions of a foreign government, helmed by fellow Jews, on the other side of the world is the " definition of antisemitism ."
And since the start of Israel's war in 2023, data have shown an increased belief in anti-Jewish tropes , with particular growth among younger Americans.
So, how do you stop one of history's oldest hate crimes? There are no easy solutions.
But one group, the Foundation to Combat Antisemitism , founded by New England Patriots owner Robert Kraft, is doing what it can through a mixture of media campaigns, partnerships and public education efforts.
Those blue squares you've seen on Kraft's lapel? That's the symbol of his organization.
"Our mission is to educate and inspire unengaged Americans to stand up to Jewish hate by recognizing that hate of any kind increases hate of all kinds," Kraft said on the organization's website.
And it's as good as any place to start. So that next year, all we're talking about is the records that were broken on Boylston Street.
Read more analysis from John L. Micek
Read the original article on MassLive .
