White Supremacist, Tracked by COE, Arrested on Vandalism Charges in Missouri
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On March 9, 2024, authorities arrested Frankie Rizzello Jr., a 20-year-old resident of Chesterfield, Missouri, on two felony charges related to property damage motivated by discrimination, one grounded in religion and the other in race. According to charging documents from the University City Police Department, Rizzello faces these charges for allegedly spray-painting a church and an Asian restaurant with graffiti in 2023. In October 2023, after an extensive examination of user…
Untangling False Claims About Ashkenazi Jews, Khazars and Israel
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Research from ADL has documented in detail the rise in antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the weeks and months following Hamas’s brutal assault on Israel on October 7, 2023. One of the most insidious claims used to discredit both Jews and Israel is that Ashkenazi Jews (i.e., Jews who trace their ancestry to Northern and Eastern Europe) have no historical or genetic relationship to Jewish antiquity in the land of Israel—making Jews “colonizers” with no legitimate claim to…
Anti-Israel activists, Terrorist Organizations Hail Aaron Bushnell as a “Martyr” After Self-Immolation Outside Israeli Embassy
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On February 25, 2024, Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, approached the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., and set himself on fire to protest the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, saying he would “no longer be complicit in genocide.” His act of protest has garnered praise from anti-Israel groups and foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs). Bushnell is the second person to self-immolate in front of a U.S.-based Israeli government building in protest of the…
Anti-Israel Protesters Glorify Terror Groups, Violence
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UPDATE: April 26, 2024 Explicit support for recognized terror groups and the glorification of prominent individuals affiliated with those groups continues to feature prominently at anti-Israel protests across the country. As documented by ADL, notable recent examples of this support for terror have surfaced at “Popular University for Gaza” campus encampments and Quds Day protests in April 2024 and at International Women’s Day protests in March 2024. There have been numerous…
Farrakhan Responds to Israel-Hamas War with Antisemitic Conspiracy Theories in Saviours’ Day Speech
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The Nation of Islam (NOI) held its annual Saviours’ Day conference at the Huntington Place convention center in Detroit, Michigan, on February 22–25. As in years past, the event featured significant antisemitism, including from longtime NOI leader and keynote speaker Louis Farrakhan. Farrakhan’s keynote address concluding the conference on Sunday, titled “What Does Allah, the Great Mahdi and the Great Messiah Have to Say About the War in the Middle East,”…
Global Antisemitic Incidents In the Wake of Hamas' War on Israel
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Since the October 7 Hamas massacre of over 1,200 people in Israel, Hamas supporters and other antisemitic actors have threatened and targeted Jewish and Israeli individuals and institutions worldwide. Below is a select list of antisemitic incidents outside of Israel with an apparent connection to the events in Israel, as well as several country-specific statistics. You can also find a map of select incidents and data here. Country Statistics Since Oct. 7: Argentina: In January 2024, there …
Lakewood Megachurch Shooter Expressed Antisemitism, Support for Islamist Terrorist Groups
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Preliminary research by the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) shows Genesse Moreno, who opened fire at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, on February 11, 2024, before being killed by off-duty officers, expressed support for a range of antisemitic, anti-Zionist and extremist beliefs and praised U.S.-designated terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Moreno’s mother reportedly attended the church, but it is unclear why Moreno targeted Lakewood in the attack that…
Blood Libel on Wheels: Anti-Israel Activists Using Digital Billboard Trucks to Share Antisemitic Messages
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In recent years, activists have harnessed the marketing power of digital billboard trucks to promote their messages. Since the October 7, 2023, Hamas terrorist attack on Israel, anti-Israel activists have increasingly used these vehicles, adorned with propaganda, to spread anti-Zionist and antisemitic themes, including a modern form of the blood libel: that Israelis harvest Palestinian organs. These trucks, bearing a variety of anti-Israel and antisemitic messages, are sponsored by U.S…
Posters on X Attack FCAS Super Bowl Ad Urging People to Stand Up to Antisemitism
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The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS), a non-profit organization founded by Robert Kraft, aired multiple advertisements during the Super Bowl on February 11, 2024, urging people to #StandUpToJewishHate. Notably, a new ad premiered during the game, featuring Dr. Clarence B. Jones, former advisor to and speech writer for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.
Although online reactions to the campaign were largely positive, many users on X (formerly Twitter) were quick to criticize the…
Platform Transparency Reports - Just How Transparent?
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Executive Summary Transparency reports of the largest social media platforms continue to be anything but transparent. New research from the ADL Center for Tech & Society (CTS) shows that most of these platforms only publish partial information about how much hate content they remove or action in some way. To make matters worse, these reports are often hard to locate, void of meaningful information, and only provide patchy insights into how platforms address hate, harassment,…
To the Editor:
The attempt by Jewish Voice for Peace and IfNotNow to conflate the Palestinian struggle with that of the civil rights movement in the U.S. is disingenuous and offensive. Let’s be clear: The Israeli-Palestinian crisis is complicated and there are few historic parallels to what’s happening in Israel and Gaza in the aftermath of the horrific Hamas massacre on Oct. 7. Equally unique and without parallels is the Black struggle for civil rights in America. From the…
Islamic State, Al-Qaeda Call for Violence Against Jewish Communities Following October 7 Attack
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Though Salafi-jihadist groups like the Islamic State (IS) and Al-Qaeda (AQ) have a long and well-established history of making calls for violence against Jews, over the last few months they have capitalized on the momentum of the Israel-Hamas war to broadcast violent messaging, justify hateful rhetoric against the state of Israel and denigrate Jews around the world. Using their official media outlets, as well as supporter-produced propaganda, both the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have called on…
Blood Libel Accusations Resurface in the Wake of Oct. 7
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Cartoons and posts that accuse Israel of stealing organs from Palestinians in Gaza illustrate the persistency of the age-old antisemitic canard of blood libel.
In the aftermath of October 7, 2023, and the start of the Israel-Hamas war, some anti-Israel activists have boldly expressed support for terrorism against the State of Israel and Jews, which at first manifested in explicitly supporting Hamas. More recently, these activists and leftist groups have also expressed admiration for another group they consider allies in the fight against U.S. imperialism and Zionism: the Houthis. The Houthis, an Iranian-regime backed U.S.-designated terrorist group…
Jacksonville Shooter’s Newly Public Writings Reveal White Supremacist Beliefs
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On August 26, 2023, Ryan Christopher Palmeter shot and killed three Black people at a Dollar General in Jacksonville, Florida, before killing himself. On January 19, 2024, the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Department released the shooter’s “manifesto,” which he left behind for his family to find. The vitriolic, hateful writings show that Palmeter held white supremacist beliefs and demonstrated a wide range of hate, including racism, extreme anti-LGBTQ+ animus, xenophobia and…
Campus Antisemitism Online: The Proliferation of Hate on Sidechat
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ADL Center for Tech and Society shows anonymous campus messaging apps like Yik Yak & Sidechat are failing to curb hatred triggered by the Israel-Hamas war.
D.D. Guttenplan
Editor The Nation
Dear Don,
A few years ago, we were in touch concerning your decision to engage Mohammed El-Kurd as the Palestine correspondent for The Nation. I raised a series of concerns based on his public record of hateful rhetoric. At the time, you made the case that most of his offensive tweets and remarks, which we had shared with you in a fact sheet, were made prior to his onboarding at the Nation. You also noted that, while some of his remarks &ldquo…
Tunnel Discovered Under Chabad Headquarters Sparks Antisemitic Firestorm Online
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On January 8, 2024, clashes broke out at the Chabad Lubavitch World Headquarters in Brooklyn, known as 770, over a passageway allegedly constructed by students from adjacent properties into the synagogue. This passageway, referred to as a tunnel in the media, was discovered in December 2023, and when a cement truck came to fill it, skirmishes broke out between police and involved individuals. Video footage showed men inside and in front of the passageway, both defacing the property and…