Number of anti-Semitic incidents in Arizona on the rise in 2017
Nov 3, 2017, 4:14 AM | Updated: 11:37 am
(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
(AP Photo/Markus Schreiber)
PHOENIX — The number of anti-Semitic incidents in Arizona have spiked during the first three quarters of 2017, compared to the same time last year.
According to the Anti-Defamation League, there were 20 recorded incidents of anti-Semitism in the first three quarters of the year. In comparison, there were just five total incidents during the same period in 2016.
Harassment claims made up a majority of the reports in 2017, with 14 in total. There were also five vandalism reports and one assault report, according to the ADL.
In 2016, harassment incidents also made up a majority of claims, but there were just four in total.
According to the ADL, anti-Semitic incidents have continued to be a “serious concern” in K-12 schools and on college campuses.
One of the incidents reported in Arizona consisted of students making “cruel Holocaust jokes or anti-Semitic remarks” in a K-12 school.
“In one case, a lesson on the Holocaust was turned into a concentration camp survival game in a seventh-grade classroom,” according to the ADL.
Posters advocating white supremacy were also posted on Arizona State University’s Tempe campus earlier this year.
A group also posted a billboard depicting President Donald Trump, Nazi-like symbols and nuclear explosions in downtown Phoenix in March. Later that month, anti-Semitic fliers were distributed overnight in a Scottsdale neighborhood.
Some notable instances that occurred in 2016 included a Chandler family whose menorah was destroyed and disfigured into a swastika on the sixth night of Hanukkah and a Sun City synagogue whose Holocaust memorial was damaged on the first day of Hanukkah.
In a statement, ADL Arizona regional director Carlos Galindo-Elvira called the rise of anti-Semitic incidents “disturbing” and said the organization is “committed as ever to combat anti-Semitism and all forms of hate in the Arizona region.”
