ADL Annual Audit Shows Moderate Increase in Anti-semitic Acts

There was a moderate increase in anti-Semitic vandalism and other assaults or threats against Jews, Jewish institutions or property in 1984 after a two-year decline, according to the annual audit conducted by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith. The audit revealed however, a noticeable increase in such serious crimes as arson and bombings.

The survey, based on the data supplied by the ADL’s 30 regional offices in the U.S. and prepared by its Civil Rights Division’s research department, cited a total of 715 incidents of vandalism, an increase of 6.7 percent over the 1983 total of 670.

Thirty-two of the 715 incidents were described by the ADL as serious crimes which included 17 cases of arson and attempted arson compared to 13 in 1983; three bombings, as compared to nine in 1983; one attempted bombing, the same as in 1983; and I cemetery desecrations, compared to 9 in 1983.

The ADL said in the category of other assaults or threats, tabulated separately, there were 369 incidents, an increase of 5.4 percent over the 1983 figure of 350. The survey showed New York experienced 237 episodes of anti-Semitic vandalism, followed by California with 99; Maryland with 69; New Jersey, 56; and Florida, 51. Overall, 32 states and the District of Columbia were involved in the incidents.

1984 FIGURES CALLED ‘DISTURBING’

Nathan Perlmutter, ADL national director, said the 1984 figures were “disturbing because they reverse a two-year decline.” But he noted that the 6.7 percent increase was far smaller than the 192 percent increase in 1980 and 158 increase in 1981. There were 84 persons arrested by law enforcement authorities in 1984 in connection with 51 incidents, the ADL said, compared with a total figure of 115 persons arrested in 55 incidents in 1983.

Included among the findings of the 1984 audit was a pattern that has developed in the past; that the overwhelming majority of those arrested for alleged anti-Semitic incidents were 20 years old or younger. In only five of the thousands of anti-Semitic incidents during the last six years was there any reported evidence of organized hate group invovlement — the last in 1981, according to the ADL.

Furthermore, the survey found that while the total number of assaults, threats, and harassments directed against Jews or Jewish-owned properties remained practically unchanged — 369 in 1984 compared to 350 in 1983 — there was a reversal of the statistical breakdown.

The number of episodes in which Jewish institutions were the targets of mail or telephone threats and other means of harassment increased markedly from 39 in 1983 to 106 in 1984. At the same time, however, the total of incidents in which individual Jews were the targets dropped by 48 — from 311 in 1983 to 263 in 1984.