by jacob berkman & joe eskenazi
special to j.
Israel’s war in Lebanon seems to have brought out the worst in Bay Area protesters, according to the Anti-Defamation League’s 2006 nationwide anti-Semitism audit, released Wednesday, March 14.
The tally of reported incidents is way down nationally — 12 percent, with 1,554 instances in 2006 as opposed to 1,757 in ’05 — and virtually unchanged locally, at 73 as opposed to 75 two years ago.
But it’s the nature of the incidents that concerns the ADL. A far higher proportion of events seem to be triggered by hatred of Israel than in past years.
“What we noticed is it appears that incidents are motivated more now by what we term ‘the new anti-Semitism,’ either explicitly mentioning Israel or [triggered] by conversations about Israel,” said Tami Holzman, the ADL’s assistant regional director.
“We saw our peak of incidents at August, right at the time Israel was at war with Hezbollah.”
Considering that the reported events in the Bay Area comprise such a small sample, it’s wrong to infer any massive societal trends: Of the roughly 40 incidents in which the perpetrators’ motivation was clearly discernible, only nine were deemed anti-Israel events in 2005. One year later, that number had nearly tripled, to 23.
Among the more disturbing:
n Protesters on the street marching against the Iraq War and Israel’s war in Lebanon were heard to chant “Don’t trust the news, it’s controlled by Jews.”
n A woman phoned a number of East Bay Jewish institutions and demanded, among other things, that AIPAC stop the “massacre” in Lebanon, asked how Jews slept at night and reportedly said, “Go suck Israel.” The ADL said no definitive identification of the caller was made, but it may be the same female caller who buzzed synagogues and Jewish institutions several years back.
There was some old-fashioned anti-Semitism as well, ranging from anti-Jewish bullying in a Walnut Creek middle school to a neighbor assaulting a Jewish man in El Dorado County (near Lake Tahoe).
ADL officials cautioned against reading too much into the national decline in incidents. “The audit is just one measure of anti-Semitism in the United States,” said ADL National Director Abraham Foxman. “There is also an onslaught of anti-Semitism out there in blogs, emails and Web sites — and most significantly in conspiracy theories about alleged Jewish power which have even penetrated the mainstream — that simply cannot be quantified.”
Glen Lewy, the ADL’s national chair, noted that despite the decline, approximately four anti-Semitic attacks occur daily in the United States.
Among those was a shooting attack last summer on the Jewish federation offices in Seattle in which the federation’s assistant director, Pamela Waechter, was killed and five people were wounded.
The alleged gunman was Naveed Afzal Haq, an American of Pakistani descent apparently motivated by anger over U.S. support for Israel.
Nationally, there were 669 acts of vandalism, a slight increase from 2005, while incidents of harassment or assault dropped substantially, from 1,140 to 885.
The highest number of attacks were reported in heavily Jewish districts in the Northeast, California and Florida, reflecting both the number of Jewish targets there and the increased reporting of anti-Semitic incidents in areas where the community is robust and the ADL enjoys a strong relationship with law enforcement.
New York had the most reported incidents with 284, followed by New Jersey with 244, California with 204 and Florida with 179 — all of which were down from last year. Connecticut and Illinois saw significant increases, with the latter nearly doubling from 30 incidents to 56. Massachusetts saw a modest increase, from 93 to 96.
Two trends the league identifies as “ongoing factors” — anti-Semitism in middle and high schools and on college campuses — both declined in 2006.
ADL leaders seemed to downplay what appears to be good news.
Foxman said that notwithstanding yearly fluctuations, the number of incidents appears to have “settled” around 1,500 over the past 15 years, despite the community being “at the maximum” in terms of awareness, commitment to reporting and investment in security.
“There’s no trend established,” Foxman said. “What we’re concerned about, there is this leveling-off, which is troubling, because we’re not seeing a trend for the elimination of anti-Semitic incidents.”
CopyrightJ, the Jewish news weekly of Northern California