Antisemitic incident report: Sept. 9-15

(September 15, 2023 / JNS)

JNS publishes a weekly listing of antisemitic incidents recorded and found by Jewish, pro-Jewish and pro-Israel organizations; national and international news; and social media. By the Anti-Defamation League’s count, an average of seven instances of varying measure occur daily in the United States. (Dates refer to when the news was reported, not when the events took place.)

Sept. 9

A synagogue in Los Altos, Calif., evacuated on Shabbat due to a bomb threat, and a cyclist spewed neo-Nazi insults and Holocaust denial at a Jewish couple in Los Angeles. X (formerly Twitter) sued California over a bill requiring social-media companies to file twice-annual reports on their efforts to fight hate speech, racism and other threats. “If Musk truly wants to maintain X as a free-speech platform and demonstrate he is against antisemitism, he needs to stop engaging with antisemites,” wrote Arsen Ostrovsky, CEO of the International Legal Forum. Just a few minutes of browsing X posts with the word “Jew” makes it “disheartening to witness so much antisemitic content,” wrote Sacha Roytman, CEO of Combat Antisemitism Movement.

Sept. 10

“Six million Jews, as well as people of other ethnicities and religions, died horrific deaths under Hitler for no reason other than that they were Jewish,” the Old Stone House & Museum Observation Tower in Vermont stated after vandals painted swastikas and antisemitic statements on it. “We must be ever vigilant that history does not repeat itself.” In Israel, Waze fired an Israeli-Arab driver who ripped a mezuzah off a customer’s door and trashed it. North Carolina police arrested two people who dropped off antisemitic fliers in Wake Forest and Rolesville. In San Diego, several neighborhoods saw antisemitic fliers distributed.

Sept. 11

The neo-Nazi Blood Tribe group claims to have started a chapter in Ohio. In Arapahoe County, Colo., residents found fliers promoting a white supremacist antisemitic “documentary.” In New Brunswick, N.J., a teenager was arrested after making antisemitic threats against a principal. In Portland, Maine, and San Diego, people distributed Goyim Defense League fliers blaming Jews for 9/11. The group also placed antisemitic materials on car windshields in Iowa outside a Minor League baseball game.

Sept. 12

Masked protesters held up hateful banners, including one that stated “Jews Did 9/11,” in Novato, Calif., on Sept 10. The ADL launched an entertainment institute. Following public outcry, a Philadelphia-area cemetery will cover up a memorial to Ukrainian Nazi collaborators.

Sept. 13

In Miami, the Scheck Hillel Community School evacuated following a bomb threat. Police arrested a Florida man for hanging a swastika flag over an Orlando overpass. (See Sept. 3.) Yaël Braun-Pivet, president of France’s National Assembly (part of the Parliament), filed a complaint after receiving an antisemitic letter. Some 86% of posts reported for “extreme hate speech,” including Holocaust denial and Nazi imagery, remained on X a week later, per a report. Police shut down an Argentinian bookstore selling neo-Nazi and antisemitic titles; displaying Nazi symbols is illegal in the country. Someone carved a swastika into a playground slide in Freeport, Maine; and police in Sandusky, Ohio, arrested a man in connection for distributing antisemitic fliers. In Washington, D.C., someone carved at least four swastikas on a Georgetown University police cruiser. Chassidic Jews reportedly experienced antisemitism from passengers and staff on an ITA Airways flight from Rome to New York.

Sept. 14

A court awarded $430,000 to five Jewish students it found to have endured antisemitic bullying for years at a school in Australia. “Open to everyone except this murderer,” read signs that Israel’s Foreign Ministry placed on cardboard cut-outs of Iranian President Ebrahim Raisi, which it placed at iconic New York City sites. (The depictions of the “Butcher of Tehran” reference sanctions restricting Raisi on his expected upcoming visit to the United Nations.) A 71-year-old woman in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., is pursuing other options after a district attorney opted not to pursue what she is calling an antisemitic attack.

Sept. 15

Two attackers told a young Jewish man in Marseille, in the south of France: “We are going to slaughter you. Get down on your knees, you dirty Jew of a dirty race. We are going to kill you.” The director of the Buchenwald and Mittelbau-Dora Memorials Foundation says a mayoral candidate associated with a far-right party in Germany who stated that Holocaust commemorations are a “guilt cult” will be barred from the memorials. “If you have a problem with me or my people, I’m very easy to find,” wrote Natan Levy, an Israeli UFC fighter who lives in the United States, in response to a Swedish fighter who called for Jews to be expelled from Israel and wrote, “Give me the strongest man from Israel, I will break him.” On this day, in 1935, Nazi Germany enacted the Nuremberg Laws, stripping Jewish citizenship.