January saw 90 percent increase in attacks against US Jews
Police at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas, during the taking of hostages, Jan. 15, 2022. Credit: News 360 TV via Wikimedia Commons.
Published February 16, 2022
(JNS) The Combat Antisemitism Movement revealed in its latest monthly report that it monitored 19 physical attacks targeting Jews in January, which represents a 90 percent increase from the same time period last year.
In total, CAM tracked 158 anti-Semitic incidents reported in the media in January, marking a 9.2 percent decrease from January 2021’s 174 incidents.
In January of this year, 58.2 percent (92 incidents) were associated with far-right motives, 13.9 percent (22 incidents) had far-left motives, and 13.3 percent (21 incidents) had motives tied to Islam. The remaining 14.6 percent (23 incidents) had “unidentifiable motives.”
CAM noted that the month saw a 14.1 percent increase in far-right anti-Semitic incidents compared to 2021, while there was a decrease of 5.2 percent, 5.8 percent and 3.1 percent in the far-left, Islamist and unidentifiable cases, respectively. There were 45 anti-Semitic vandalisms recorded in January, an 8.2 percent decrease from the previous year.
On the positive side, it highlighted nine “adoptions and endorsements” of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA)’s working definition of anti-Semitism took place in January—in Alabama, Nevada, Oklahoma, Tennessee, Utah, Virginia, and West Virginia, the town of Southampton in New York and Argentina’s Santa Fe Province.
The watchdog group also monitored anti-Semitic incidents in the three months leading up to the Jan. 15 hostage terrorist attack at Congregation Beth Israel in Colleyville, Texas. In the three-month period ahead of the attack, the Jewish group tracked 34 incidents around the world that targeted synagogues and Jewish centers, and 65 percent of which took place in the United States.
There was also a “spike in coordinated social-media activity” calling for the release of “Lady Al-Qaeda” convicted terrorist Aafia Siddiqui leading up to the hostage-taking situation, CAM said last week.
