Increase in anti-Semitic crime decried
The Sarasota-Charlotte Democratic Progressive Caucus stands resolutely with the Jewish community in Florida, the United States and around the world in condemning anti-Semitic attacks, hate speech and anti-Semitic tropes, the Caucus has announced.
“As U.S. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez stated, ‘The recent surge in attacks is horrifying. We stand with our Jewish communities in condemning this violence,’” the Caucus points out in a news release.
According to the FBI, hate crimes are the highest level in over a decade, and there has been a “nearly 7% rise in religion-based hate crime, with a 14% increase in crimes targeting Jews or Jewish institutions,” the release continues. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has noted a major “surge in anti-Jewish hate” since the recent conflict among Israel, Hamas and the Palestinians, the release adds.
Social media platforms such as Facebook, Tik Tok, Instagram and Twitter “have been used to spread many such anti-Semitic messages, the release points out. In one week, the release adds, the ADL noted more than 17,000 variations of the tweet “Hitler was right.”
“Anti-Semitism tragically has been one of the world’s oldest forms of hatred going back to ancient Egypt, Greece and Rome when Jews were persecuted for not adopting the religion of those empires,” the release adds. Over the past 2,000 years, it says, Jews have been forced into ghettos; burned alive during the Spanish Inquisition; and made the repeated focus of pogroms in Europe, along with the mass extermination program implemented by the Nazis in the early 1940s. “Never again!” the release emphasizes.
DeeAnna Dowdle, president of the Sarasota-Charlotte Democratic Progressive Caucus, said in the release, “We stand in solidarity with the Jewish community and demand that law enforcement bring the perpetrators of the recent attack on the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg, to justice. We also call upon Florida to improve upon its state standards on Holocaust, genocide and tolerance education and all Florida’s schools must thoroughly educate students to those standards. There must be NO PLACE FOR HATE in our state!” she added with more emphasis.