As the war in Gaza rages for a second month, violence of a different kind is erupting across the United States.
Bias attacks against American Jews, Muslims and Arabs have risen to levels not seen in years, fueled by a conflict that often triggers strong feelings on both sides of the issue.
The Anti-Defamation League, an American Jewish advocacy group, documented a staggering 832 antisemitic incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment between October 7, the day Hamas attacked Israel, and November 7. That amounts to an average of nearly 28 incidents a day and represents an increase of 315% over the same period last year. The incidents included more than 600 acts of harassment, 170 instances of vandalism, and 30 assaults, ADL said.
At the same time, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), a Muslim civil rights organization, reports an “unprecedented surge in bigotry” since the war started. Between October 7 and November 4, the group received 1,283 requests for help and complaints of anti-Muslim or anti-Arab bias, an increase of 216% over an average 29-day period last year. CAIR said more than 15% of complaints fielded by its national office involved alleged hate crimes.
Behind the numbers are real people. While the majority of the reported incidents don’t rise to the level of hate crimes, at least two recent deaths have been tied to the conflict.
On October 14, Joseph M. Czuba, a 71-year-old Illinois landlord, fatally stabbed Wadea Al-Fayoume, a 6-year-old Palestinian American boy, after seriously wounding his mother, Hanaan Shahin, in their home outside Chicago. Czuba was arrested and charged with murder and attempted murder.
Then last week, Paul Kessler, a 69-year-old Jewish protester, died following an altercation at dueling pro-Palestinian and pro-Israeli demonstrations in a Los Angeles suburb. Loay Alnaji, 50, a pro-Palestinian demonstrator, was arrested on Thursday in connection with Kessler’s death.
The vitriol and violence fueled by the Gaza war have spread to U.S. colleges and universities, heightening tensions between pro- and anti-Israel student groups.
A Cornell University professor was caught on camera calling the Hamas attack on Israel “exhilarating” and “energizing.” A student at the Ivy League school was later charged with making threats against Jewish students. At Drexel University in Philadelphia, a Jewish student’s dorm room door was set on fire. At the University of Texas, a group of men targeted students during a Palestine Solidarity Committee meeting. And a Muslim student at Stanford University was allegedly run down by a driver making a racist remark.
The Department of Education on Thursday announced new investigations into six U.S. colleges over alleged incidents of Islamophobia and antisemitism, part of the Biden administration’s aggressive effort to counter the surge in anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish hate incidents.
President Joe Biden, who has faced criticism from American Muslim and Arab groups for his unwavering support of the Israeli military campaign in Gaza, delivered an Oval Office address last month to denounce antisemitism and Islamophobia.
“We must, without equivocation, denounce antisemitism,” Biden said. “We must also, without equivocation, denounce Islamophobia.”
Law enforcement officials are sounding the alarm over the Israel conflict’s knock-on effect.
FBI Director Christopher Wray warned this month that the bureau is concerned that violent extremists — both domestic and homegrown — “will draw inspiration from the events in the Middle East to carry out attacks against ordinary Americans.”
The Israeli-Palestinian conflict often inspires hate crimes, but the ripple effect has been outsized this time, magnified by the length and intensity of the war, the polarization of public opinion and media coverage, the spread of false and inflammatory information, and the use of inciteful language by people on both sides of the issue.
‘Hate spike’
Brian Levin, founder of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism and professor emeritus at California State University, San Bernardino, said the U.S. is experiencing a “generational hate spike that is likely to have a longer and more violent half-life than prior event-driven increases.”
“The bigoted backlash from the Israel-Hamas war is causing online invective and disinformation to skyrocket, while anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crime incidents are spiking to possible decade highs,” Levin said. “And in the case of anti-Jewish hate crimes, a possible record in the U.S.”
Nationwide data are hard to come by, but New York and Los Angeles police are reporting triple-digit increases in anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crimes in the nation’s two largest cities.
In New York, police recorded 69 anti-Jewish hate crimes in October, up from 22 last October, and eight anti-Muslim criminal acts, up from zero last year. Meanwhile, Los Angeles police reported 22 anti-Jewish hate crimes between October 6 and October 30, up from eight during the same period last year. Anti-Palestinian, anti-Arab and anti-Muslim crimes jumped to eight from one last year.
Maya Berry, executive director of the Arab American Institute in Washington, said it’s no surprise that the conflict has spawned attacks on Arabs and Muslims.
“Historically, we’ve talked about something called the ‘backlash effect,'” Berry said. “Events happening anywhere in the world end up having an impact domestically. We saw it during the [1973-1974] Arab embargo. We saw it in the aftermath of 9/11. And we’re seeing it play out now.”
Levin is one of a handful of experts who have examined the link between the Israel conflict and hate crimes in the U.S.
His analysis of FBI statistics dating to the early 1990s shows that anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate crimes tend to escalate during Israeli-Palestinian tensions.
In March 1994, for example, hate crimes targeting Jews more than doubled to 147 incidents after extremist Israeli American Baruch Goldstein fatally shot 29 Palestinian worshippers at the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.
The sharpest rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes occurred in October 2000, with the onset of the Second Intifada — 204 incidents, marking an increase of 183% over October 1999.
Recent years have seen significant increases during Israel-Hamas conflicts in 2006, 2014, 2018 and 2021, according to Levin’s analysis.
“Our data across three decades clearly show huge percentage spikes in anti-Jewish hate crime in the U.S. when there is war in the Holy Land,” Levin said.
Other studies corroborate Levin’s finding. A recent study by political scientist Ayal Feinberg found that during weeks of Israeli military operations between 2001 and 2014, the number of antisemitic incidents rose by 24% across the U.S., while acts of antisemitic violence and intimidation increased by 33%.
Over the years, the pattern has held up, Feinberg, director of the Center for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights at Gratz College in Pennsylvania, said in an interview.
“I think it’s critical to note that even in the United States, which many consider to be the most philosemitic country in the world, that over the last two decades there’s been no factor that explains increases in antisemitism greater than when Israel is engaged in violent conflict with its neighbors,” Feinberg said.
The link between the Israel conflict and anti-Muslim hate crime is less clear-cut. The FBI data show double- and triple-digit monthly increases in anti-Muslim hate crimes during Israeli military operations in 2004 and 2014. But other times of tension have seen no significant increase in anti-Muslim hate crime.
Instead, terrorist attacks carried out by jihadi groups have served as a primary driver of anti-Muslim hate crimes in the U.S.
The terror attacks of September 11, 2001, triggered the biggest monthly spike in anti-Muslim hate crime — a record 330 incidents, more than 80 times higher than previously. Though the number of incidents eventually tapered off, it never returned to pre-9/11 levels.
The second-largest increase came in December 2015 after then-candidate Donald Trump called for a “total and comprehensive” ban on Muslims entering the U.S. The result was dramatic: nearly 70 attacks on Muslims for the month, up 886% from the year before.
The flood of bias complaints CAIR received in the weeks after October 7 was the most since Trump’s “Muslim ban” speech, the group said.
The question of what motivates people to attack Muslims and Jews against the backdrop of the Israeli conflict has no simple answer. But experts agree that hate crime perpetrators often hold Muslims and Jews responsible for the actions of Hamas and Israeli military forces.
“There is a lot of blame going on,” said Michael Jensen, a senior researcher at the National Consortium for the Study of Terrorism and Responses to Terrorism at the University of Maryland. “This conflict is more complex than these simple characterizations of all Palestinians are terrorists, or all Jews are invaders systematically conducting genocide.”
Increasingly ubiquitous posters of Israelis taken hostage by Hamas have become a flashpoint in this scapegoating.
In the days after the Hamas attack on Israel, the “kidnapped” flyers, depicting images of abducted Israelis, were pasted on trees outside a mosque in San Diego, putting the congregation on edge.
“Why would you presume anyone at the Islamic Center of San Diego has anything to do with what took place there?” Berry said.
Meanwhile, anti-Israel protesters have been criticized for tearing them down. Two dentists recently lost their jobs over their removal.
‘Good and evil’
Feinberg said age-old antisemitic stereotypes about “Jewish power” help explain why Jews are blamed for the actions of Israel.
Jews are perceived to “have this greater responsibility to speak out, to prove that they are not like these other Jews or part of this powerful entity of Jews,” Feinberg said.
In addition to anti-Palestinian rhetoric, Muslim and Arab American advocates say the mainstream media’s portrayal of the conflict as a “struggle between good and evil” has fanned the recent flame of hate directed at American Muslims and Arabs.
“This dehumanizing framing impacts Muslims in America, as individuals who hold anti-Muslim prejudice frame them as terrorists,” said Mobashra Tazamal, associate director of the Bridge Initiative, a research project on Islamophobia at Georgetown University in Washington.
Noting the importance of public discourse, Berry of the Arab American Institute recalled how former President George W. Bush’s visit to a Washington mosque following the attacks of September 11, 2001, helped reassure many Arab and Muslim Americans worried about being scapegoated for the actions of al-Qaida.
“Regrettably, what we’re seeing right now is different,” Berry said.
While the Biden administration was slow to acknowledge Palestinian suffering during the conflict, it eventually “pivoted, and that’s important,” Berry said.
“And I think when that happened, it does contribute to public safety in a very real way, meaning people start to think, ‘OK, wait. There are victims here that need to be recognized,'” Berry said.