There were more than 9,300 antisemitic incidents across the U.S. in 2024, according to data released by the Anti-Defamation League, the highest level ever recorded by the civil rights organization.
Incidents took place across all 50 states and the District of Columbia. The data marked a 5 percent increase in incidents over 2023 and a whopping 893 percent increase in antisemitism over the past 10 years, according to the group.
Assaults rose by 21 percent compared to 2023, while vandalism was up 20 percent, amid continued tension across the country amid the ongoing Israel-Hamas war.
The Anti-Defamation League cited examples including swastika graffiti on campuses, protesters with flags and headbands supporting U.S.-designated terror groups, antisemitic fliers from right-wing groups like Patriot Front, and individuals throwing red liquid near a New Jersey synagogue hosting a real estate event featuring information on how to buy property in the occupied West Bank.
The wave of antisemitism coincided with a similar spike in anti-Muslim hate crimes, which rose 18 percent across 28 cities in 2024, according to preliminary data from the Crime and Justice Research Alliance.
Official FBI hate crime data for 2024 has not been released.
Nearly 60 percent of the incidents the Anti-Defamation League tracked in 2024 featured some relation to Israel or Zionism, the first time such incidents made up a majority.
Since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, kicked off the wider war in Gaza, antisemitic incidents have taken place across the country, though defining the barriers between legitimate political protest against Israel and hateful antisemitism against Jews has roiled Congress and college campuses alike.
For its part, the Anti-Defamation League “does not consider criticism of Israel or general anti-Israel activism to be antisemitic,” though the group considers “picketing of Jewish religious or cultural institutions for their perceived or real support for Israel” to be hateful, and relies in part on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, which labels certain criticisms of Israel inherently antisemitic. Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt argued “anti-Zionism is antisemitism,” in a 2022 speech.
Members of Congress are pushing for the Department of Education to adopt the alliance definition, though civil rights groups like the American Civil Liberties Union warn it could chill legitimate political speech on campus.
The Trump administration has labeled virtually all of the thousands of campus protesters who demonstrated on behalf of Palestine over the last two years to be antisemitic, even though many were Jewish themselves.
The White House has invoked an obscure legal authority to arrest international student campus leaders of the movement, arguing in part that they harm U.S. foreign policy interests in combating antisemitism.
The administration has also sought to strip universities like Harvard and Columbia of cumulatively billions of dollars in federal funding, arguing they haven’t done enough to stop campus antisemitism.
