Washington, D.C., Feb. 28, 2024: The Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and ADL (the Anti-Defamation League) today filed a complaint with the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights against the Berkeley Unified School District (BUSD) for failing to take action to end nonstop bullying and harassment of Jewish students by peers and teachers since Oct. 7. According to the complaint, Berkeley administrators have ignored parent reports and…
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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…
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,”…
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…
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…
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…
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…
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…
Andrew Tate is a British-American former kickboxer and reality television star with millions of social media followers – over 10 million on X alone.
In our final episode of 2023, Oren Segal and Jessica Reaves look back at some of the developments in hate and extremism we wish would end along with the year
Longstanding accusations of Israeli organ harvesting have reemerged in the aftermath of the October 7 massacres. This conspiracy theory plays on the blood libel trope, which dates to the Middle Ages and alleges that Jews use the blood of Christian children to bake their Passover bread. In the current Israeli-Palestinian context, organs are substituted for blood, and in some cases, activists are alleging that Israel purposefully kills Palestinians to harvest their organs.
In…
Owen Benjamin (aka Owen Smith) is a former mainstream comedian and actor who has embraced far-right conspiratorial and antisemitic content since 2018. He released a standup comedy performance on October 13, 2023, that includes antisemitic, anti-LGBTQ+ and racist rhetoric.
Benjamin, who starred in several films and comedy specials in the early 2010s, experienced significant success as a mainstream conservative comedian, and appeared in the movies The House Bunny and All’s Faire…
In the weeks following the October 7 Hamas terror attack on Israel, political activists have targeted elected officials – and their offices – with harassment and vandalism. Many of these incidents featured anti-Israel rhetoric, allegations of support for genocide and demands for a ceasefire.
Fewer than half of the elected officials who have reported being targeted by protestors are Jewish. All targeted individuals have expressed support for Israel, and most have…
Jewish and Muslim communities worldwide have been rocked by the impact of Hamas’s October 7, 2023 war on Israel, its massacre of over 1,200 people and Israel’s military response targeting Hamas and other terrorists in Gaza. That impact has included an increased number of threats against both Jewish and Muslim communities, per the FBI and ADL. In the U.S., a number of post-October 7 incidents targeting Muslim, Palestinian and Arab American individuals appear to be…
Since the Hamas-led terror massacre in southern Israel on October 7, 2023, BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaigns directly targeting “Zionist” institutions, businesses or individuals, have persisted in response to Israel’s operations against Hamas in the Gaza Strip. BDS is a component of a long history of campaigns and efforts to delegitimize and isolate Israel. In recent years, this has explicitly focused on the rejection, isolation and marginalization of …
Since the 1970s, some shareholders of publicly traded companies have used “shareholder proposals” as a form of activism to encourage more responsible corporate behavior and to raise concern on issues that a company may not be adequately managing. Proposals can include demands that companies divest from certain funds or entities, uphold codes of conduct, improve disclosure on environmental and social topics, or make tangible commitments to improving business practices.
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Toolkits are a popular tool for activists to share information and organize around a topic or policy demand, from city hall resolutions to Congressional action. There is nothing inherently nefarious about activists wishing to effect change. However, in the post-October 7 landscape, some anti-Israel activists’ rhetoric include outright support for terrorism.
In certain cases, the rhetoric in these calls to action crosses the line into support for or minimization of terror. If…
Teach students what biased language is and help them reflect on the reasons why people use it and how they can address and challenge biased words and language.
Promoters of conspiracy theories and hate are using generative artificial intelligence (GAI) to create misleading content about the Israel-Hamas war. This not only amplifies confusion and hate on social media; it can also cause some to doubt the validity of actual war images, creating unnecessary suspicion at a time of deeply polarized public opinion. ADL’s previous research includes recommendations on what tech companies should do to address heinous abuses of GAI technology such as…
Since Hamas’s October 7, 2023, massacre of 1,400 people in Israel, U.S.-based anti-Israel activists and organizations have justified, excused and even venerated the terror group’s actions that day, some using overtly antisemitic rhetoric. That includes a number of U.S. university professors, some of whom have expressed inflammatory views, celebrating Hamas’s actions on October 7 as “heroic” or an “achievement” and calling for “Zionists” to…