Incendiary rhetoric about the war between Israel and Hamas
is contributing to a stark rise in Islamophobia and antisemitism in the United
States — and raising the risk that violent words could turn into actions.
Three 20-year-old Palestinian men were shot and injured near
the University of Vermont on Saturday after being confronted by a white man
with a handgun while walking along a street — incident federal authorities are
investigating as a possible hate crime.
Attorney
General Merrick Garland said Monday a sharp increase in threats against
Jewish, Muslim and Arab communities across the US has been recorded since the
beginning of the war, which has highlighted sharp divisions in American society
over the Middle East, particularly on college campuses.
“There is understandable fear in communities across the
country,” Garland said.
Susan
Benesch, director of the Dangerous Speech Project and a faculty associate at
Harvard’s Berkman Klein Center for Internet and Society, said that since
October 07 there has been a tremendous amount of awful content circulating
online about Israel and Palestine, much of which is false or demonizing.
“Much of it conflates Hamas with all Palestinians, and even
Muslims, and on the other side, it conflates the Israeli leadership with all
Israelis, and even all Jews,” Benesch said, “That makes it easy for people who
are consuming that rhetoric … to want to take revenge against the people who
are perceived by them to be members of the largest of those groups — that is to
say, Muslims on one side and Jews on the other.”
In the first four weeks following Hamas’s surprise attack on
Israel’s southern border, the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) —
the nation’s largest Muslim advocacy organization — documented a 216%
increase over the previous year in reports of anti-Muslim or anti-Arab
bias.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), which fights hate and
antisemitism, similarly documented a 388% increase in antisemitic
incidents in the US over the first two weeks of the war, compared with the same
period last year.
Conflict
between Israelis and Palestinians has erupted over decades many times before,
but the unprecedented attack launched by Hamas on October 07 — and the
subsequent bombardment of Gaza in the weeks since — has created some of the
deepest political rifts the US has seen on the matter in modern history.
Those fractures have been put under a microscope in the past
52 days, during which supporters of both sides have taken to American streets
in droves to protest.
“This
conflict has polarized people not only in the United States, but all over the
world more quickly and severely than any other event,” Benesch said. “Even
people who have no personal ties to either side are extremely passionate and
agitated about it.”
In Congress, zealous rhetoric and acts by some lawmakers
have only further steeped divisions in an already polarized nation.
Ryan
Zinke introduced a bill earlier this month that could ban Palestinians from
entering the US and possibly expel those who are already here. Zinke described
the bill as the most anti-Hamas immigration legislation I have seen, conflating
all Palestinians with the militant group.
GOP presidential nominee Ron DeSantis, meanwhile, has
suggested the US should not take in any Palestinian refugees from Gaza because
they are all antisemitic.
The only Palestinian American serving in Congress Rashida
Tlaib was censured earlier this month over her criticism of Israel. She posted
a video on X, formerly known as Twitter, that said President Biden supported
the genocide of the Palestinian people and included clips of protesters
chanting from the river to the sea, a phrase defined by the Anti-Defamation
League as antisemitic. Tlaib defended her stance, saying she will not be
silenced and I will not let you distort my words.
Republican
presidential candidate Chris Christie on Sunday placed some blame on
former President Trump, suggesting his intolerant language rubbed off on the
rest of the country. Trump was harshly criticized during his presidency
for promoting antisemitic tropes and Islamophobic beliefs.
“When you show intolerance towards everyone, which is what
he does, you give permission as a leader for others to have their intolerance
come out,” Christie told CNN of Trump. “So intolerance towards anyone
encourages intolerance towards everyone. And that’s exactly what’s going on
here.”
Garland said Monday that the Justice Department is closely
monitoring the impact the conflict may have in inspiring extremists at home and
abroad, opening discussions with local law enforcement and community leaders to
discuss any threats.
When people are horrified, they often seek accountability, Benesch
said. An Illinois landlord, for example, was charged with a hate crime last
month after being accused of stabbing and killing a 6-year-old Muslim boy in suburban
Chicago — a striking example of people who are “neither Palestinian nor Israeli
becoming violent” in response to the conflict, she said.
Tensions have been especially high on American college
campuses for students on both sides who have said they fear for their safety at
school. Threats and attacks on Jewish and Arab Muslim students have seen a
marked rise since the war began with heated protests sometimes turning violent.
The
Palestinian men shot in Vermont on Saturday are all US university students. The
man who pleaded not guilty to the shooting was a 48-year-old white man. Two of
the victims were American citizens, while a third was a legal resident. Two of
the victims at the time of the shooting were wearing keffiyehs, a type of scarf
associated with the Palestinian cause.
Benesch said fiery rhetoric on the rise in the US since the
start of the war could cause some Americans to take matters into their own
hands, no matter how misguided those efforts may be.
“Someone who wants revenge, who wants to hold someone
responsible, sometimes wants to do that personally,” Benesch said. “In this
country … it’s easier to find a Jew than an Israeli — and it’s exactly the same
thing on the other side.”
