The Anti-Defamation League’s annual Audit of Antisemitic Incidents issued Tuesday found that the ADL Santa Barbara/Tri-Counties witnessed an alarming doubling of antisemitic incidents in the Ventura, Santa Barbara and San Luis Obispo counties in 2021.
The audit counted 14 total incidents in the region, up from seven incidents in 2020.
“While the number of incidents themselves may not seem shocking, the brazenness of the incidents and the state and national trends they mirror are alarming,” Dan Meisel, regional director of ADL Santa Barbara/Tri-Counties, said in a news release. “The impacts of assault, vandalism and propaganda reach beyond an individual victim and instill concern they are representative of more widespread attitudes and normalization of hateful conduct.”
Examples of antisemitic incidents from 2021 include:
— In February, someone drew swastikas on the cement outside Alpha Epsilon Pi, a historically Jewish fraternity at Cal Poly San Luis Obispo.
— In July, someone sent virulently antisemitic and threatening messages via Facebook to an Oxnard author in response to an ad for the book she wrote about the Holocaust.
— In December, the manager of a facility at a public university in Santa Barbara directed antisemitic slurs at a Jewish customer.
There were reports from all three counties of swastika vandalism on private and public property.
Unfortunately, the upward trend in reported incidents is not limited to the Tri-Counties. The entire state of California saw a substantial increase (27%) in total incidents jumping from 289 to 367 incidents in 2021.
While harassment (217) and vandalism (135) saw notable increases of 23% and 25% respectively, ADL is most alarmed by the soaring uptick in antisemitic assaults in the Golden State.
There was an increase from four to 15 assaults in the state from 2020 to 2021. Many of these attacks took place during the Israel-Hamas conflict of May 2021.
Looking at the United States as a whole, reported antisemitic incidents reached an all-time high in 2021, with a total of 2,717 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism reported to ADL. This represents the highest number of incidents on record since ADL began tracking antisemitic incidents in 1979 – an average of more than seven incidents per day and a 34% increase from the 2,026 credible reports of incidents recorded in 2020.
The audit found that antisemitic incidents reached a high watermark across virtually every category.
Attacks against Jewish institutions, including Jewish community centers and synagogues, were up by 61%, incidents at K-12 schools increased 106%, and incidents on college campuses rose 21%.
Assaults — considered the most serious incident type because it involves person-on-person physical violence triggered by antisemitic animus — increased 167%, jumping to a total of 88 reports in 2021 from 33 in 2020. Incidents of harassment were up 43%, and acts of antisemitic vandalism rose 14%.
Incidents were reported in all 50 states as well as the District of Columbia. The states with the highest number of incidents were New York (416), New Jersey (370), California (367), Florida (190), Michigan (112) and Texas (112). Combined, these states accounted for 58% of the total incidents.
In 2021, there were 525 reported incidents at Jewish institutions such as synagogues, Jewish community centers and Jewish schools, an increase of 61% from 327 in 2020.
Of the total, 413 were incidents of harassment, 101 were incidents of vandalism and 11 were assaults. About one-quarter of the harassment incidents were linked to anti-Zionist or anti-Israel sentiments.
email: mmcmahon@newspress.com
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For more information about the AntiDefamation League, visit www.adl.org.
