Antisemitic Incidents Nearly Double In Orange County And Long Beach
LAist, April 26, 2022, excerpt:
Peter Levi, regional director for the Anti-Defamation League in Orange County/Long Beach, said he's seen an increase in people reaching out to the organization after encountering harassment.
"They're not wearing hoods like they used to generations ago," said Levi, comparing perpetrators to the Ku Klux Klan. "They're just openly showing their faces and insulting people and in public spaces. When this is what's happening, we have a problem in our society, we have a problem in our communities."
Levi pointed to how easy it is to access hate in online spaces, especially through social media, which has led to a steady increase of extremist ideas and ideologies adopted into the mainstream.
"We see extremists that used to run as third-party candidates are now running as mainstream candidates," Levi said.
He said more people need to step up and call out these incidents, adding that anti-semitism is often the bellwether of other forms of prejudice.
May 5, 2022 Voice of OC
Jewish Hate Spiked Across Orange County and Long Beach in 2021, Audit Finds - Voice of OC
n audit released by the Anti-Defamation League late April found that there were 62 antisemitic incidents in the Orange County and Long Beach area last year – nearly double that of 2020 when the ADL tracked 34 incidents in the region.
Peter Levi, the regional director of the Anti-Defamation League Orange County/Long Beach chapter, said he anticipated an increase when reports started coming in last year.
“We saw an 82% increase in antisemitic incidents,” he said in a Wednesday phone interview. “I knew there would be an increase, but this is a really large and significant increase.”
The audit comes as Orange County officials and local organizations struggle to curb the trend of increasing hate crimes and incidents.
The audit’s release also comes roughly 77 years after Allied forces began liberating Nazi death camps in April 1945 as troops were pushing into Germany. The Holocaust ended up killing more than 6 million Jews.
Meanwhile, some worry that the increase in antisemitism is a harbinger for other communities throughout Orange County.
...Levi stressed the importance of reporting hate incidents.
“Reporting creates data and data helps us drive policy that’s really important and reporting also brings support and resources to the individuals who are targeted, as well as to help resolve those situations,” he said.