Deadliest assault on Jews in US history
follows 57% increase in antisemitic incidents in 2017
By Harriet
Sherwood
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An
FBI agent outside the Tree of Life synagogue in Squirrel Hill, Pittsburgh.
Photograph:
Brendan Smialowski/AFP/Getty Images
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It was the deadliest assault on Jews in US
history. Eleven people gunned down as they attended their local synagogue on
Shabbat, the Jewish sabbath. Synagogues across the country locked their doors
and an icy fear spread through Jewish communities.
The US is often thought to be the safest
country in the world for Jews. The long shadow of the Holocaust still hangs
over Europe, where antisemitism flourishes on the far right and parts of the
far left. Jews in Israel are permanently on guard against attack.
In the great melting pot of the US, it was
perhaps easier. In Squirrel Hills, the Pittsburgh neighbourhood that is home to
the Tree of Life synagogue, local residents have spoken since Saturday’s
shooting of harmonious relations between communities.
Last year, however, antisemitic and white
supremacist stickers were found on car windscreens, park benches and playground
slides. A 2017 study of the city’s Jewish community found that 63% of those in
Squirrel Hill were “a little or somewhat” concerned about antisemitism, and 18%
were “very much” concerned. Overall in Pittsburgh, 16% of Jews had directly
experienced some form of antisemitism in the previous year.
Some blame the rise in hate speech and hate
crime on a culture under Donald Trump’s leadership in which people are
emboldened to express prejudice and hatred.
They point in particular to the president’s
response to the death of a young woman protesting against a white supremacist
rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017. There was blame on both sides,
Trump said. “You had people that were very fine people, on both sides.”
The number of antisemitic incidents across
the US as a whole rose 57% in 2017, according to an audit by the
Anti-Defamation League, the largest single-year increase on record and the
second highest number since the ADL started tracking such data in 1979.
It said the rise was in part the result of a
significant increase in the number of incidents in schools and on college
campuses, which nearly doubled for the second year in a row.
The ADL also highlighted an increase in
antisemitic abuse and harassment on social media in a report this month.
FBI data for 2016, the last year for which
figures are available, shows that 54.4% of victims of anti-religious hate
crimes were Jewish, and 24.5% were Muslim.
Other countries have also seen rises in
antisemitism. The Community Security Trust in the UK has logged record levels
of antisemitic behaviour in the past two years, particularly on social media.
“In some cases, social media has been used as a tool for coordinated campaigns
of antisemitic harassment, threats and abuse directed at Jewish public figures
and other individuals,” its most recent report said.
A global study of antisemitism earlier this
year found a fall in the number of acts of violence, attributed to greater
security, but a notable rise in harassment and abuse.
It highlighted a strengthening of the extreme
right in some European countries, “accompanied by slogans and symbols
reminiscent of the 1930s”.
“Expressions of classic traditional antisemitism
are back and, for example, the term ‘Jew’ has become a swear word,” it said.
Many synagogues and other places where Jews
gather in the UK and Europe have security guards, CCTV and searches on entry,
and offer training for their staff in dealing with attacks.
That may now become routine in the US. In the
aftermath of Saturday’s shooting in Pittsburgh, city authorities in New York,
Los Angeles, Chicago, Houston and Philadelphia sent extra patrols to
synagogues.
Trump was swift to condemn the Pittsburgh
shooting as “an act of pure evil” on Saturday, but an ADL poll last year found
that a third of respondents thought the US president held antisemitic views.
Almost two-thirds thought he was anti-Muslim, and just over half that he was
anti-Latino. A similar percentage thought he was racist.