More than 10,000 anti-Semitic incidents have occurred in the United States in the year since the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7, according to preliminary data from the Anti-Defamation League. This is the highest number of incidents ever recorded in a single year since the League began tracking and monitoring the data in 1979.
These data were collected from October 7, 2023 to September 24, 2024, and represent an increase of over 200 percent compared to the incidents reported to us in the same period a year earlier, in which 3,325 incidents were recorded.
“Today we mourn the victims of the murderous attack by Hamas in Israel on the seventh of October, and mark the anniversary of the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Since that day, American Jews have not had a single moment of respite,” he said Jonathan Greenblatt the global executive director of the Anti-Defamation League. “Instead, we have faced an alarming number of anti-Semitic threats and experienced calls for increased violence against Israelis and Jews everywhere.”
According to the Anti-Defamation League’s Extremism Research Center, which collects reports and tracks data on anti-Semitic incidents, these more than 10,000 anti-Semitic incidents fall into the following categories: Over 8,015 cases of harassment Oral or written, over 1,840 cases vandalism and over 150 cases of physical assault.
Moreover, at least 1,200 of these anti-Semitic incidents occurred on college campuses. In the corresponding period a year earlier, the Anti-Defamation League recorded about 200 incidents, an increase of 500 percent.
Of these cases, over 2,000 cases occurred in Jewish institutions such as synagogues and Jewish centers. More than half of all incidents at Jewish institutions were threats to plant bombs (only 81 threats to plant bombs against Jewish institutions were recorded during the same period of the previous year).
The Anti-Defamation League’s preliminary data also found that over 3,000 of all incidents occurred during anti-Israel rallies, which regularly featured explicit expressions of support for terrorist groups including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), one of the most worrisome anti-Semitic trends. of the Anti-Defamation League, recorded since October 7, 2023.
Every year, the Anti-Defamation League tracks incidents of anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism and assault in the United States. These data are published annually in the Audit of Antisemitic Incidents. In 2023, the Anti-Defamation League recorded an unprecedented total of 8,873 anti-Semitic incidents, a 140 percent increase from the previous year.
The league expects these preliminary figures to grow as it receives more incident reports from partner organizations, law enforcement agencies and victims. The final data on anti-Semitic incidents for 2024 will be published in the spring of 2025.