As Israel solemnly marked Yom HaShoah, the Jewish state’s national day of Holocaust remembrance, events across the globe this week served as a disturbing reminder of the persistent threat posed by antisemitic hatred eight decades after the Nazi genocide.
In Sweden, three large banners bearing swastikas were unfurled over a main highway outside the capital, Stockholm. The incident occurred on April 20, Nazi leader Adolf Hitler’s birthday, a date that often sees neo-Nazi provocations across the globe. At Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, Jewish students were harassed and denied access to parts of campus by protesters who had set up a new anti-Israel encampment. A Florida State University student with a history of using neo-Nazi imagery on social media and online gaming platforms perpetrated a mass shooting at the Tallahassee school, killing two people and wounding six others.
At the Coachella Music Festival in Indio, California, the Irish hip hop trio Kneecap displayed obscene anti-Israel slogans above the stage during their performance.
Other antisemitic occurrences documented by the Antisemitism Research Center (ARC) by CAM this week included:
- New York City: Police arrested two men after they fired at visibly Jewish men in Brooklyn’s Williamsburg neighborhood with a gel gun.
- Ukraine: An attacker threw a Molotov cocktail at a synagogue in the central Ukrainian city of Kryvyi Rih.
- Nepal: A Norwegian man broke into and vandalized the Chabad House in Kathmandu.
This week, physical violence/threats and vandalism comprised 25.2% (just over 1 in 4) of incidents recorded - an increase from 17.6% last week and 14.1% the week prior.