Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said Friday on MSNBC’s “Deadline” that there has been an alarming rise in anti-Semitic attacks across the nation in the past few days, particularly in New York and Los Angeles.
Greenblatt said, “We have seen week over week since the fighting in the Middle-east started more than a 50% surge in anti-Semitic attacks here in the United States from New York City to Los Angeles to Florida to New Jersey to South Carolina, and more and more. Incidents like assaults in broad daylight. People chased down and beaten. Reports from Southern California of men throwing bottles at homes that had Jewish Mezuzah on the doors, acts of vandalism at synagogue, and just out and out acts of harassment that things being said to people that I can’t repeat on the air. So we are deeply alarmed by this. ”
He added, “I think makes all Jews feel afraid and should make all people feel afraid. This isn’t America.
Anchor Nicolle Wallace asked, “You’ve seen a lot and been in that role. I wonder where you place this moment in terms of how you feel? Do you feel scared?”
Greenblatt said, “I do feel scared and heard from people all over the country in the past week alarmed from college campuses to La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles, people are feeling under assault. It is like a Charlottesville every day driving down the street targeting Jewish neighborhoods through a megaphone screaming, ‘Are you Jewish?’ Throwing bottles at people. This isn’t normal. We have been fighting hate over 100 years and seen in the past that tension in the Middle East can spawn hate crimes here.”
Follow Pam Key on Twitter @pamkeyNEN
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