The Los Angeles Times reports the number of anti-Semitic incidents in the U.S. “sky-rocketed” 86% during the first three months of the year, which are also part of Trump’s first 100 days. According to a new report released Monday, the Anti-Defamation League/ADL’s audit of anti-Semitic events counted 541 anti-Semitic attacks and threats against Americans in the first quarter of the year” which is a dramatic increase over the same period last year.
The surge in anti-Semitic incidents in the United States came against an overall drop in such incidents worldwide, according to a report issued Sunday by the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University.
While anti-semitic incidents in countries like France dropped 61%, they increased in America. The report also noted that along with the dramatic increase in the United States across the board, anti-Semitic incidents on U.S. college campuses rose by 45%.
Jonathan Greenblatt, chief executive of the New York-based civil rights group, “which pulls data from law enforcement, victims and local Jewish organizations to compile its annual audit” says the most concerning fact is the numbers have accelerated since November. Greenblatt said the increases were due to the presidential election and a rise in activity among white supremacists.
His group found 34 instances last year that were related to the election. Among them: graffiti discovered in Denver in May that said, “Kill the Jews, Vote Trump,” and an incident in November in which a St. Petersburg, Fla., man was accosted by someone who told him, “Trump is going to finish what Hitler started.”
The latter quote turned my stomach, and yet it’s so important for people to see, hear and read the extent of hatred Trump has evoked. Earlier in the year, Trump told a reporter, “I am the least anti-Semitic person that you’ve ever seen in your entire life...” His ridiculous bravado once again proved to be untrue, especially when the White House intentionally left out Jews in a statement on Holocaust Remembrance Day. Then Trump waited six weeks before condemning over 10 hoax bomb threats to Jewish centers. In another instance, just before Easter, White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer was forced to publicly apologize for stating Hitler did not use chemical weapons on his people, ignoring the fact that Hitler gassed, to death, millions of Jews and others who deemed “undesirable.”
Amanda Susskind, a Los Angeles-based regional director for a civil rights group, blamed politicians for part of the uptick and included Trump for his initial hesitancy to denounce anti-Semitism.
“When leadership doesn’t speak out against it, that creates a petri dish of an environment where there is no sense that there is anything wrong” with anti-Semitism, Susskind said. Yet, she saw “a general normalization of hate, whether in social media or online or through incidents that are reported,” she said.
Most likely feeling the pressure from this data, and the pressure to not look like a
total failure on the final day of his first (and and many hope last) 100 days in office, Trump tweeted a Holocaust Remembrance Proclamation that appears on his Facebook page, you know, because Trump does everything, everything that benefits Trump.
Had he cared about anti-semitism, he would have mentioned Jews in the first White House statement on the Holocaust Remembrance Day and spoke out sooner against acts of domestic terrorism. He may fool some of the people some of the time, but no matter how he tries, Social Media and the Resistance will continue to remind Americans what a lying, manipulative an failure this“FakePresident” really is. And we will do it until he is finally removed from office — and he will be removed. The people will see to it.