The violent uptick in anti-Semitism in the US is hard to understand through a political paradigm because, for the most part, the data suggest it isn’t politically motivated — which also makes it harder to distill into a talking point and more urgent to address.

Acknowledging that doesn’t mean letting right wing violent extremism off the hook— it means acknowledging the very real and escalating violence against Jews, especially in orthodox enclaves, that is committed by non politically motivated assailants.

I have been diligently tracking these attacks on my community for years, and have been pressing the NYPD (through FOIA requests) for richer data. But the bottom line is that this trend isn’t neatly traceable to rhetoric from the right, as politically convenient as that may feel.

Yes, ALL of the anti-Semitic attacks linked to extremists in 2018 were connected to right wing extremists by the ADL. But that only accounts for 13% of the anti-Semitic incidents that year. https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.jta.org/quick-reads/adl-finds-right-wing-individuals-responsible-for-many-anti-semitic-and-extremist-incidents-in-2018/amp">https://www.google.com/amp/s/www...