The head of L.A.'s Anti-Defamation League said that Jewish hate has become normalized in Southern California.
“We're seeing common everyday people who are engaging in this kind of graffiti who are driving down the street and screaming at people who are visibly Jewish the most horrible vile things,” Jeffrey Abrams, who heads the ADL in L.A., told KNX News’ Emily Valdez. "And it's not necessarily that they're engaged and part of an extremist group, they're simply part of a society that is now normalizing antisemitism. “
He added that Jewish-owned businesses are also being targeted.
“Businesses that are simply owned by Jewish people who are being targeted with swastikas and other graffiti,” he said. “And when you say ‘kill Zionists,’ that's not abstract. What that is saying is [to] kill people who believe that Jewish people should have their own homeland. This is the environment, whether it's a Holocaust survivor in their eighties or nineties or it's a 12-year-old on their way to synagogue for their bar mitzvah lessons.”
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It’s not just the Jewish community seeing this. The L.A. area Office of the Council on American-Islamic Relations also reported an increase in Muslim hate incidents and crimes.
In a statement, CAIR-LA Civil Rights Managing Attorney Dina Chehata, Esq. said:
“In 2022 we only had one hate crime reported from Oct. 7 to the end of the year, but when you look at the same period in 2023 following the events of Oct. 7, we saw 68 hate crimes and hate incidents reported to our office.”
Abrams urged everyone to report any hate incidents and crimes to the ADL and local police.
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