Hatred Surges Worldwide Over Israel-Hamas War
Since the start of the Israel-Hamas war, Jews, Arabs and Muslims around the world face a shared daily reality: They’re increasingly victims of hate crimes.
From New York to London and Melbourne, reports of such attacks are reaching record highs. Mosques and synagogues, homes and businesses have been vandalized. There have been assaults, threats and harassment in schools, at universities and on public transport.
In the worst incident, a six-year-old Muslim boy of Palestinian descent was stabbed to death by his family’s landlord in the US state of Illinois.
It’s not the first backlash to a Middle Eastern conflict. Grief, anger and fear have often spread outside the region, causing friction in diasporas. But this time it’s more intense and the wave of hate may have a way to go before cresting, according to advocacy groups, former law enforcement officials and analysts.
Social media has a lot to answer for. Disinformation and inflammatory content is spreading faster and further than ever before, normalizing offensive rhetoric and creating an environment where many people feel they have to choose a side. Extreme groups of all stripes have sensed an opening.
“It’s a very dangerous time,” said Elizabeth Price, the mother of a Brown University student shot in the US state of Vermont while walking with two friends also of Palestinian descent over Thanksgiving. They were speaking a mix of Arabic and English at the time and two of them were wearing keffiyeh scarves. Police are investigating the attack for evidence of a hate crime.
It’s impossible to measure the exact scale of this wave of hatred, or compare countries. What constitutes a hate crime by law differs wildly from one place to another, and vulnerable groups don’t tend to report abuse.
But Muslims, Jews and Arabs are describing unprecedented feelings of vulnerability and insecurity.
For policymakers, the challenges are clear. — Caroline Alexander