A Closer Look at the ‘Uptick’ in Antisemitism

THIS WEEK, President Joe Biden met with leaders from five major American Jewish organizations in response to a letter expressing concerns about a “surge in antisemitic attacks,” which the groups connect to popular discourse and protest surrounding Israel’s military campaign in Gaza. Republican Senators Tom Cotton and Mitch McConnell announced their intention to introduce a bill combatting antisemitic hate crimes. On social media, antisemitism became a trending topic, with users posting blue squares on their Instagram feeds in support of Jews. 

Most of the news stories on recent antisemitism cite the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which, in a May 20th press release, reported an “uptick in antisemitic incidents linked to recent Mideast violence.” But what does an “uptick in antisemitic incidents” really mean? How do we measure a “surge”? These past few months, I’ve been immersed in researching hate crimes and hate crime legislation in the United States, and I’ve learned that it is notoriously challenging to actually identify a spike in incidents. As ProPublica has meticulously documented, the US government’s methodology for reporting on hate crimes is incomplete and inaccurate, as it relies on reports from local police departments, many of which opt out of providing such data. (The majority of departments that do participate in the FBI’s program to track hate crimes typically report zero incidents—evidence that police do not view documenting hate crimes as a priority.) Private advocacy organizations like the ADL that track hate crimes against specific communities use a broad range of criteria and collection methods, making it difficult to get a full picture. All in all, in moments of greater vigilance, like this week, experts say it’s possible that statistics like the ADL’s are recording an uptick in attention to a particular group, rather than an upswing in violence: When a certain topic is prominent in the media, victims may be more likely to report or share information about violent incidents, and advocacy organizations and law enforcement may be more motivated to track those reports, skewing the data. “We’re actually measuring spikes in media attention to these crimes more than we’re actually measuring crimes,” Mike German, a fellow at the liberal think tank Brennan Center for Justice, with expertise in hate crimes and domestic terrorism, told me recently. “Law enforcement responds to the political attention of the day rather than objective collection and enforcement on a continuous basis.” 

As evidence of the “uptick” in antisemitism, the ADL says it has documented more than 17,000 tweets containing variations of the phrase “Hitler was right” between May 7th and May 14th, the week when violence broke out in Israel/Palestine. The organization also said it had received 193 reports of “possible antisemitic incidents . . . in the week after the crisis began, up from 131 the previous week.” But a closer look at these statements yields a number of follow-up questions. Online abuse by purported neo-Nazis or those adopting their rhetoric is unfortunately common; has the ADL tracked tweets glorifying Hitler for other weeks, in order to provide a baseline for comparison to the number of tweets it found in recent weeks? And had the organization yet reviewed reports of the 193 “possible incidents” to determine their legitimacy? What kinds of incidents were they? Assault? Harassment? Vandalism? How did the organization decide when to add an incident to its “tracker of antisemitic incidents,” which does not yet contain 193 reports for that week? Meanwhile, a May 24th ADL blog post, cited in The New York Times, used an entirely different set of numbers, reporting an increase from 68 the week before Israel and Hamas began exchanging fire to an eventual 124 the week of May 17th. What accounts for these competing datasets? The ADL did not respond to my requests for comment. 

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