Anti-Semitic incidents in New York up 90 percent in 2017

Anti-Semitic incidents escalated in 2017, according to a new report by the Anti-Defamation League, surging nearly 60 percent nationwide and more than 90 percent in New York state alone.

This is the largest single-year increase on record since the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) began tracking data on anti-Semitic incidents in the 1970s, the organization said when it released its annual report on Tuesday.

New York state saw 380 reports of anti-Semitic incidents in 2017, from physical assaults and vandalism to harassment and attacks on Jewish institutions, the report found. That’s up from 199 such incidents in 2016.

“The numbers are just so high. … These are trends that we just don’t like to see,” said Evan R. Bernstein, ADL New York regional director. “We’ve always had spikes, issues of up and down, but these kind of sustained spikes — especially with the enormity of them— this is something very very difficult for us to accept."

Read more: https://www.metro.us/news/local-news/new-york/anti-semitic-incidents-new-york-up-90-percent