Reports of antisemitism in N.J. reached record levels in 2021, group says – New Jersey Monitor

At Princeton College in Might 2021, Jewish college students have been verbally harassed outdoors a tutorial constructing.

4 months later, a Teaneck man smashed the home windows of a health care provider’s workplace with a hammer, demanding to know whether or not sufferers have been Jewish.

And through Hanukkah that yr, a sticker with a swastika was discovered outdoors a Mount Laurel synagogue. 

These are simply three episodes that contributed to a file variety of antisemitic incidents in New Jersey in 2021, with 370 complete reported, in keeping with an annual audit launched by the Anti-Defamation League Tuesday. The determine represents a 25% improve from 2020, and it’s the very best quantity recorded because the Jewish advocacy group started monitoring incidents in 1979 utilizing data from victims and regulation enforcement.

The report comes only a week after officers charged a 27-year-old man with federal hate crimes after police say he violently assaulted and tried to kill at the least three folks in Lakewood as a result of they’re Jewish.

Antisemitic incidents have elevated practically yearly since 2013, apart from a drop in 2020 the Anti-Defamation League attributes to the pandemic. The 2021 information exhibits a return to pre-pandemic developments, with New Jerseyans experiencing antisemitism via harassment, vandalism, and assault the group referred to as “emblematic of a bigger nationwide drawback.”

“Jewish communities in New Jersey are coping with file ranges of antisemitism, and ADL is working carefully with victims, colleges, regulation enforcement, elected officers, and religion and neighborhood leaders to assist reverse this development,” Scott Richman, regional director of the group’s New York/New Jersey workplace, stated in a press launch. 

Nationally, antisemitic incidents reached an all-time excessive in 2021, with 2,717 incidents reported. Fourteen % of these occurred in New Jersey, the second-highest quantity in any state, the audit says.

Bergen County noticed the most important variety of antisemitic incidents, with 70 recorded by the Anti-Defamation League. Subsequent was Ocean County with 44 and Middlesex County, 31. 

Statewide there have been 252 reviews of harassment, 112 acts of vandalism and 6 reported assaults. A couple of third of the incidents came about in public locations. Others have been reported at colleges, personal houses, companies, and on-line. Thirty-five included photographs of a swastika.

“Our final objective helps to create secure and inclusive college climates to make sure that no pupil suffers from bias, discrimination or hate, and we sit up for persevering with our work with educators in New Jersey to assist them fight antisemitism and all types of hate in our colleges,” Richman stated. 

Antisemitism was additionally evident throughout the state’s school campuses, which noticed a 17% improve in reviews of anti-Jewish bias. Swastikas have been drawn on educational buildings and mezuzahs have been stolen, the audit says.

Alpha Epsilon Pi, a traditionally Jewish fraternity at Rutgers-New Brunswick, was egged throughout a Holocaust remembrance occasion.

The very best variety of antisemitic incidents have been reported in Might, which the audit attributes to an outbreak of violence between Israel and the Palestinian militant group Hamas. Greater than 50 incidents have been documented in New Jersey that month, about 86% increased than the state’s common month-to-month totals, the report says.

In Clifton that month house owners of a hookah bar displayed a banner with a swastika and a rendering of Israel’s then-Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu with a Hitler-style mustache.

The Anti-Defamation League says it’s notably involved with the New Jersey European Heritage Affiliation, a Central Jersey-based hate group fashioned in 2018. Of the 24 extremist-related incidents reported in New Jersey in 2021, half had ties to the group.