PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — It has been one year since Hamas launched its strike on Israel, sparking a conflict in Gaza and beyond that has taken scores of lives. Violence continues to surge across the Middle East, and the ripple effects are felt at home in Philadelphia, both as people struggle to bear witness to the massive bloodshed and as extremists make their presence known with acts of hate.
There has been a significant increase in antisemitic activity in the U.S. since Oct. 7, 2023, including at the Horwitz-Wasserman Holocaust Memorial Plaza, located at the end of the Benjamin Franklin Parkway. Incidents of vandalism there have increased from two per year to five.
The post-Oct. 7 vandalism displayed “far-left antisemitism” that blames “American Jews for committing genocide in Israel.”
“Over this past year, we have been tagged with a very large swastika at the site,” said Eszter Kutas, executive director of the Philadelphia Holocaust Remembrance Foundation. “We have had tags on the foot of the original monument that stated that ‘Jews are the new Nazis.’ We have had several incidents of defacing the Israeli flag that’s located right next to the Holocaust Memorial Plaza.”
After the Oct. 7 Hamas terror attacks, Kutas said the Jewish community sought comfort by gathering at the memorial in large numbers, but overall attendance has fallen as national antisemitic activity has climbed over the last year. And, 24/7 security at the plaza is simply not possible.
“We’re all allowed to have opinions, and it is, in fact, a good thing when we question the actions of people who lead us,” she said. “But oftentimes, this criticism of Israel is taken really to the extreme and really crosses over to questioning the right of Israel to exist as a sovereign state.”
Included in this wave of antisemitic rhetoric is a resurgence in Holocaust denial.
Kutas said properly educating young people about modern-day Israel and its connection to the Holocaust is imperative, but it is not currently part of the school curriculum in our region.
“The Jewish community is truly concerned by the level of antisemitism that is present and the level of ignorance that is present and the bias that is present against the Jewish community,” she added. “I think most of our work therefore has to focus on students and our young adults, where we can.”
Hamas’ attack on Israel on Oct. 7 was the deadliest attack on Jews since the Holocaust. On Sunday, the Anti-Defamation League reported that there have been more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents throughout the U.S. in the year since the attack — the highest number of incidents ever recorded in a single year since the ADL started tracking data in 1979.
The monument at the Philadelphia Holocaust Memorial Plaza is the nation’s oldest public monument dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust, established in 1964.