No Jew needs an announcement or a statistical count to know that anti-Semitism is growing. We report week after week on what seems to be the endless creativity in targeting Jews: they must take down the mezuzzot from their condominium door posts, or they are attacked on the streets of Berlin or Brooklyn for wearing a kippah, or they are called termites or said to “deserve to die,” or they are edified with Sieg Heils in a high school, etc. etc. — the list seems endless. [For the most recent creative disfigurement, see Airbnb, left.]
That said — disturbing though the developments of recent years surely are —the statistics about anti-Semitism need to be analyzed contextually. The latest ADL audit of anti-Semitic incidents in 2017 shows a rise — no surprise there. But consider: A significant percentage of the anti-Semitic incidents in 2017 were committed by an autistic Israeli teen — a Jew — who made hundreds of threats to JCCs (and even managed to threaten Israeli institutions while in jail!). Clearly, the threat from the general society in 2017 was significantly lower than the statistics show, when one apppropriately deducts the repeated acts of this one Jewish teen.
Consider further: The likelihood that the number of reported incidents of anti-Semitism may be lower than the actual count (as not all incidents are reported) is balanced by an opposite likelihood: Not all reported incidents of anti-Semitism are anti-Semitic. A “report” is not a conviction; a charge is not necessarily a crime.
Finally, and most important, while it is important to have these statistics and to contextualize them, it is also important to strike an admittedly difficult balance between calling attention to and educating against anti-Semitism, on the one hand, and, on the other hand, encouraging anti-Semites via excessive public attention that some anti-Semites crave. The old saw — it doesn’t matter what you say about me just so you spell my name right — is unquestionably akin to the legitimacy that some anti-Semites feel when their acts, however hateful and harmful, elicit the public glare.
Needless to say, public glare is inevitable at the time of a major anti-Semitic incident, but otherwise it is wise not to spur a kind of competition as to who can condemn anti-Semitism the most and explain it the best. This is just what some of the anti-Semites want. Farrakhan says so explicitly. Not only sunlight can disinfect, so can silence.
I don’t care what they say about us. I care about their violence, discrimination, and vandalism (in that order). When they get violent as a group it will be time to leave. So far the violence has all been by individuals.