Saturday's synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh is the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States, the Anti-Defamation League said Saturday.
Eleven people were killed and at least six were injured in the massacre, according to local authorities.
"It is simply unconscionable for Jews to be targeted during worship on a Shabbat morning, and unthinkable that it would happen in the United States of America in this day and age," ADL Director Jonathan Greenblatt said.
"Unfortunately, this violent attack – the deadliest anti-Semitic attack in the United States since 2014 – occurs at a time when the ADL has reported a historic increase in both anti-Semitic incidents and anti-Semitic online harassment," Greenblatt said.
He was referring to recent findings by the watchdog group indicating that the midterm elections have been a "rallying point" for far-right extremists to organize efforts to spread hate against Jews online.
An ADL report released on Oct. 26 found that far-right extremists in the U.S. "have generated a wave of anti-Semitic harassment against Jewish journalists, political candidates, and private citizens. … The online public sphere – now a primary arena for communications about American politics – has become progressively unhospitable for Jewish Americans."
According to the report, in 2017, anti-Semitic incidents, including physical assaults, vandalism, and attacks on Jewish institutions, surged nearly 60% over the previous year – the largest single-year increase on record, and the second-highest number reported since the ADL started tracking anti-Semitic incidents in 1979.
The ADL found 1,986 cases of harassment, vandalism or physical assaults against Jewish people or institutions in 2017. It found 1,267 in 2016.
"We're definitely in a period in our country where there's a general decrease in civility," Aryeh Tuchman, associate director for the ADL's Center on Extremism, said. "People in the past who have tamped down their anti-Semitic proclivities may feel more liberated to express them than before."
The report, posted on the ADL's website, stated that "continuing what began during the 2016 presidential election, the members of far-right extremist groups and the so-called 'alt-right' have stepped up 'online propaganda offensives' in the runup to the upcoming midterm elections to attack and try to intimidate Jews and especially Jewish journalists.
"The themes of this online harassment against the Jewish American community, especially against journalists and prominent members of this group, have been carried from the 2016 presidential election to the 2018 midterm content," the study, whose authors analyzed more than 7.5 million tweets and interviewed Jews in politics and journalism to assess the extent of anti-Semitic harassment ahead of the midterm elections, said.
"Both anonymity and automation have been used in online propaganda offensives against the Jewish community during the 2018 midterms" and political bots "are playing a significant role in artificially amplifying derogatory content over Twitter about Jewish users. Human users, however, still accounted for the majority of derogatory Twitter traffic."
The study also found that some 80% of the harassing tweets used hashtags associated with those on the right side of the political spectrum, saying that "nearly 40% of the tweets included #MAGA or #KAG, which supporters of President Trump use to tout his 2016 and 2020 campaign slogans."
The study further found that anti-Semitic harassment is worse on Twitter than on Facebook.
"Online hate is not some idle threat that just lives online and can be ignored. Technology companies need to work harder and faster to curb the vicious violence-inducing harassment on their platforms," Greenblatt said.
"We are working to help find solutions, too, but this study shows us we have not come far enough and the companies need to do more to tamp down the spread of hatred online."
