Antisemitic incidents reach highest level since 1979 one year on from October 7 terror attacks, data shows

According to preliminary data collected by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), there were more than 10,000 instances of antisemitism between October 7, 2023, and September 24, 2024

The number of antisemitic incidents in the US reached its highest since 1979 in the 12 months since the terror attacks on October 7, new data has shown.

According to preliminary data collected by the Anti-Defamation League, there were more than 10,000 instances of antisemitism between October 7, 2023, and September 24, 2024.

These newly released figures represent more than a 200 percent increase compared to the incidents reported to the ADL during the same period a year before, which saw 3,325 incidents. It is the highest number of incidents ever recorded in any single year since the ADL started tracking in 1979.

Exactly one year ago, some 1,200 people were killed after Hamas terrorists attacked a music festival in southern Israel, sparking conflict in the Middle East that has led to the death of more than 40,000 Palestinians.

Supporters of Israel and Palestine counter-protest outside of Columbia University (Getty Images)

“Today, we mourn the victims of the October 7 Hamas attack in Israel, marking one year since the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. From that day on, Jewish Americans haven’t had a single moment of respite,” said ADL chief executive Jonathan Greenblatt.

“Instead, we’ve faced a shocking number of antisemitic threats and experienced calls for more violence against Israelis and Jews everywhere.”

According to the ADL Center on Extremism, which gathers reports and tracks antisemitic incident data, the antisemitic incidents are broken down into three categories; verbal or written harassment, vandalism, and physical assault.

The center recorded that over the past 12 months, there were more than 8,015 incidents of verbal or written harassment, more than 1,840 incidents of vandalism, and more than 150 incidents of physical assault.

At least 1,200 of these antisemitic incidents happened on college campuses. In the same period a year before, ADL recorded about 200 incidents, representing a 500 percent increase.

At least 1,200 of these antisemitic incidents over the last 12 months happened on college campuses, according to the ADL data (Copyright 2024 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)

More than 2,000 occurred at Jewish institutions such as synagogues and Jewish centers.

More than half of all incidents at Jewish institutions took the form of bomb threats, compared to just 81 bomb threats against Jewish institutions that were recorded in the same period in the prior year.

ADL’s preliminary data also found that more than 3,000 of all incidents took place during anti-Israel rallies, which featured regular explicit expressions of support for terrorist groups, including Hamas, Hezbollah, the Houthis [Yemen] and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP).

However, since the October 7 Hamas attack on Israel, the ADL has counted demonstrations that feature “anti-Zionist chants and slogans” as antisemitic, even though these protests are frequently led or attended by progressive Jews themselves, many of whom are critical of Israel.

The rule change echoed Greenblatt’s position that “anti-Zionism is antisemitism, full stop,” as he put it in a speech in 2022.

An analysis by Forward found that almost half of the more than 3,000 antisemitic incidents the ADL logged after October 7 were related to this definition.

Such action led Wikipedia to declare earlier this year that the ADL is no longer “generally reliable” as a source of information about anti-semitism and the Israel-Palestine crisis – a decision that the organization has described as a “campaign to delegitimize the ADL.”