Series of anti-Jewish attacks calls for stronger response

WHAT YOU NEED TO KNOW:

• A series of anti-Semitic attacks in the US in recent days has heightened pressure on law enforcement officials to tighten security.
• The attacks on Jews were linked to the conflict between Israel and Hamas.
• President Joe Biden and Congressional lawmakers condemned the recent violence, saying it was alarmingly concerning.

Jews in the United States have been attacked violently in recent days. Tied to the conflict between Israel and Hamas, the attacks have heightened pressure on lthe police, lawmakers and the Biden administration to take stronger actions to ease antisemitic violence.

At least 26 anti-Semitic attacks have been reported across the country, from Los Angeles to New York, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Reports range from protest signs calling Zionists “Nazis” to a few violent physical attacks. There were also reports of synagogues and Jewish community centers that were vandalized.

Joseph Borgen, 29, was assaulted by a violent mob while on his way to a pro-Israel rally in New York last week.

“They were calling me a filthy Jew, a dirty Jew,” Borgen said. “They said, ‘Hamas is going to kill all of you. Israel is going to burn.’ ”

Cops arrested one man on several charges, including assault as a hate crime, and are hunting for other attackers.

The conflict in the Middle East has often sparked violence in the US, according to experts.

“This does feel quite different,” Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the Anti-Defamation League, said in an interview Sunday.

In 2019, he said, the group identified more than 2,100 antisemitic incidents, including assault, violence and harassment, which was more than in any year since the group began tracking such episodes in 1979. And 2020, a year when many Americans stayed home because of the coronavirus pandemic, still saw the third-highest number on record, Greenblatt noted.

Congressional lawmakers condemned the recent violence, saying it was deeply troubling.

“Antisemitism is rising in America. It’s rising all over the world,” Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) said Sunday on CBS’s “Face the Nation.”

“That is an outrage. And we have got to combat antisemitism,” he added.

“The kind of anti-Semitic attacks, like those reported over the last week, are disturbing and wrong,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), tweeted Friday. “Intolerance like this has no place in New York or anywhere else, and it must be confronted and overcome.”

The Los Angeles Police Department has arrested one man involved in an attack against diners outside a sushi restaurant on Tuesday. The group of attackers were shouting anti-Israel comments.

In New York, someone threw an explosive device two days late in the Diamond District, home to many Jewish-owned businesses. It that burned a 55-year-old woman.

The nation’s most prominent Jewish organizations sent a letter to the White House calling for President Biden “to speak out forcefully against this dangerous trend and stand alongside the Jewish community in the face of this wave of hate before it gets any worse.”

“We fear that the way the [Israeli-Palestinian] conflict has been used to amplify antisemitic rhetoric, embolden dangerous actors and attack Jews and Jewish communities will have ramifications far beyond these past two weeks,” said the letter, signed by the Anti-Defamation League, the American Jewish Committee, the Jewish Federations of North America, the Orthodox Union, and Hadassah, a pro-Israel Jewish womens’ group.

Borgen, the one attacked in New York, said one of his Asian American co-workers is too afraid to ride the subway at night and called it “completely absurd” that his colleague should be forced to feel that way.

“I’ve never experienced anything like this,” he added of the attack that sent him to a hospital.

Greenblatt, of the Anti-Defamation League, urged more elected officials to condemn antisemitic attacks, which he argued would help calm tensions and reduce violence.

“I think one of the lessons of the last four years is that it makes a big difference when leaders speak up or when they fail to,” he said.

Source: MSN