Anti-Semitic incidents in Florida increased by 40 percent in 2020, according to ADL audit

Carli Teproff
·3 min read

Last year, someone hurled anti-Semitic slurs at a Jewish father and his 12-year-old son as they walked in Miami Beach.

A building at a commercial construction site in Broward was defaced with graffiti that read “The Jews did 9/11.”

And a Zoom welcome session for Jewish students at Florida International University was disrupted when an unknown participant made anti-Semitic remarks.

These are a few of the 127 anti-Semitic incidents recorded in Florida by the Anti-Defamation League in 2020. According to the ADL’s annual audit of anti-Semitic incidents released Tuesday, the state saw an increase of 40 percent in harassment and vandalism last year over the previous year; in 2019, there were 91 incidents.

There were no incidents of anti-Semitic assault in 2020 in Florida, according to the ADL audit.

Nationwide last year, there were 2,024 incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism in 2020, down 4 percent from the record high in 2019. The audit showed a 10 percent rise in harassment incidents, and an 18 percent decline in vandalism and a 49 percent decline in assaults.

The audit was released Tuesday, to coincide with the second anniversary of the deadly Chabad synagogue shooting in Poway, California. One woman was killed and three other people were injured in that shooting.

“For the last two years, we have seen a steady increase of anti-Semitic incidents in the State of Florida,” said Yael Hershfield, ADL Florida interim regional director in a news release. “The first step in addressing a societal problem is acknowledging it for what it actually is. And we must recognize that the hatred experienced by the Jewish community is real, and increasingly pervasive.”

In Florida, according to the audit, there were 97 cases of anti-Semitic harassment 2020, up from 64 in 2019. Many of those incidents occurred online, especially since more people began using conferencing platforms during the COVID-19 pandemic, the audit found. There were 30 incidents of anti-Semitic vandalism in Florida last year, up from 24 in 2019.

Miami-Dade had 27 incidents last year, more than any other county in the state. Palm Beach County had 23 incidents, and Broward had 18.

Only New York (336 incidents), New Jersey (295 incidents) and California (289 incidents) had more anti-Semitic incidents than Florida did last year.

Some of the South Florida incidents reported in the audit:

▪ A Jewish elementary school student in Broward was threatened by a peer who told him that he had a gun and that “Hitler should have finished the job.”

▪ Someone distributed a flier that read, “Our patience has its limits one day we will shut their dirty lying Jewish mouths” in downtown Hollywood.

▪ A woman in Miami-Dade received an anti-Semitic letter in the mail calling her a ‘Jew b----’ and writing that “It looks like Hitler did not do a great job by killing you all.”

▪ A Broward Jewish elementary school’s class lesson on Zoom was disrupted by an unknown participant who made racist and anti-Semitic comments — and messaged “Gas the Jews” — to the class.

▪ A person in Palm Beach received an anti-Semitic message from an eBay seller who wrote that “Jews are always a problem” and “Hitler was right.”

To report an antisemitic incident, visit adl.org/reportincident.

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