{"id":19237,"date":"2023-10-18T09:46:51","date_gmt":"2023-10-18T14:46:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=19237"},"modified":"2023-10-18T09:46:55","modified_gmt":"2023-10-18T14:46:55","slug":"war-between-israel-and-hamas-raises-fears-about-rising-us-hostility","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/?p=19237","title":{"rendered":"War between Israel and Hamas raises fears about rising US hostility"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A fatal stabbing in Illinois<\/u><\/a>, a gun pointed at protesters in Pennsylvania, vandalism at synagogues and harassment of staff at a Palestinian restaurant all are raising fears that the war between Israel and Hamas is sparking violence in the United States.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The tensions follow a familiar pattern of crimes against Jewish and Muslim communities rising when conflict erupts in the Middle East and Americans have been killed or taken hostage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have a two pronged threat to American faith communities,\u201d said Brian Levin, founding director of the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While it\u2019s too soon to say with certainty whether anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish crimes have increased during the war, hate crimes overall increased in the U.S. last year. In its annual report released Monday<\/u><\/a>, the FBI estimated that hate crimes increased by 7% to 11,634 cases in 2022 compared to the previous year. With 1,124 incidents, anti-Jewish attacks were the second most reported hate crime, after anti-Black cases. There were 158 reported incidents of anti-Muslim attacks, and 92 reports of anti-Arab cases, according to the report.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Civil rights organizations, however, believe that even before the Hamas attacks in Israel, crime data didn\u2019t reflect reality due to a lack of participation by local police departments and internalized fear among the Muslim population, said Robert McCaw, director of governmental affairs for the Council on American-Islamic Relations. In 2021, the Othering & Belonging Institute at the University of California, Berkeley, released a study in which 85% of those who were subjected to Islamophobia said they did not report it to authorities.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/a>\u201cThe true number remains to be seen,\u201d McCaw said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In one of the most troubling recent incidents, a landlord in Plainfield, Illinois, is accused of attacking a Palestinian American tenant and her son with a knife on Saturday, purportedly because of their Muslim faith, stabbing the 6-year-old boy to death and injuring the mother. The sheriff, prosecutors and family all said the boy and his mother were targeted for being Muslim. More specifically, prosecutors said the landlord was \u201cangry … for what was going on in Jerusalem\u201d and his wife told police her husband feared they would be attacked by people of Middle Eastern descent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Pennsylvania, a man was charged with felony ethnic intimidation after police said he pointed a gun and yelled slurs at attendees of a pro-Palestinian rally near the state Capitol on Friday. In Boston, the word \u201cNazis\u201d was spray-painted across the sign for the Palestinian Cultural Center for Peace.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of fear. There\u2019s a lot of anxiety and uncertainty in everything that\u2019s happening,\u201d said Abed Ayoub, national executive director for the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. He said the group has received more than 100 reports including verbal harassment, threats, intimidation and physical attacks.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt\u2019s very reminiscent of the early days of post-9\/11, where people didn\u2019t want to go outside, they didn\u2019t want to send their kids to school,\u201d he said. \u201cThey\u2019re just worried about being in public and being approached.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In Dearborn, Michigan, which has the nation\u2019s highest Muslim population per capita, community and faith leaders met outside the city\u2019s police department Monday. The city has seen multiple threats of violence in recent days, including from a man accused of asking on social media if anyone in metro Detroit wanted to \u201cgo to Dearborn & hunt Palestinians.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe have to understand that these issues that are overseas are not just overseas, they are very much also issues here,\u201d said Imran Salha, the imam of the Islamic Center of Detroit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Historically, anti-Jewish hate crimes have increased during violent Israeli-Palestinian conflicts, said Levin, a professor emeritus at California State.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In March 1994, there was a spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes from 79 incidents to 147 a month after an American Israeli extremist opened fire on Palestinian Muslims in a mosque, he said, citing FBI statistics. In October 2000, anti-Jewish hate crimes in the U.S. surged from 81 to 204 compared to the month before after a series of violent protests in Arab villages in northern Israel. Levin observed a similar trend in May 2021, particularly in cities with significant Jewish populations such as New York and Los Angeles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In California last week, flyers spreading anti-Jewish rhetoric were left in neighborhoods and on vehicles in the city of Orange. And in Fresno, police said a man suspected of breaking windows and leaving an anti-Jewish note at a bakery also is a \u201cperson of interest\u201d in the vandalism of a local synagogue.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Julie Platt, chair of the Jewish Federations of North America, said synagogues and Jewish community centers around the country have been strengthening their security programs, but that she does not want to see members of her community duck for cover.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI think the whole point of this is to terrorize us psychologically,\u201d she said. \u201cAs long as I hear of no credible threats, I believe we should live our Jewish lives.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Several Palestinian Americans interviewed Friday in a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Arab population said the atmosphere has been tense in the last week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Jumana Alkaram said she has not been personally threatened but that: \u201cI know if I was to demonstrate my heritage or the Palestinian flag there would be some type of threat. Because the majority has the support of Israel and don\u2019t have the full legit story about what\u2019s happening in Gaza.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In New York City, a Palestinian restaurant, Ayat, was forced to disconnect its phone after receiving \u201cnonstop\u201d threatening voicemails, according to co-owner, Abdul Elenani. The storefront features a mural of a crying Palestinian and its menu includes calls to \u201cend the occupation.\u201d On Friday, a man entered the dining room shouting \u201cterrorist\u201d at the people behind the counter, Elenani said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Still, the hostile reception was overshadowed by the support he has received from his neighbors, many of whom are Jewish and share his views about minimizing civilian deaths, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIn New York, we all live together, we work together, we grow together,\u201d Elenani said. \u201cAnd we all want this violence to stop.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

apnews<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fatal stabbing in Illinois, a gun pointed at protesters in Pennsylvania, vandalism at synagogues and harassment of staff at a Palestinian restaurant all are raising fears that the war between Israel and Hamas is sparking violence in the United States. The tensions follow a familiar pattern of crimes against Jewish and Muslim communities rising when […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":6,"featured_media":19238,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1152],"tags":[23141,23457,1239,1255,1385,6128],"class_list":["post-19237","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-humanrights","tag-hamas","tag-increased-us-hostility","tag-israel","tag-people","tag-war","tag-worry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19237","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/6"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=19237"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19237\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":19239,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/19237\/revisions\/19239"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/19238"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=19237"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=19237"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ustower.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=19237"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}