State Sen. John Velis, the co-chair of the Legislature’s Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism, said of the report, “We can’t accept this, and we can’t tolerate this.”
Reminder Publishing file photo
A new report from the Anti-Defamation League shows that Massachusetts recorded 438 antisemitic incidents in 2024, the fifth most in the United States and the most in New England by far.
The tally came from the ADL’s annual Audit of Antisemitic incidents. According to the group, there were 638 antisemitic incidents of assault, vandalism and harassment across New England, and the region has seen the number of incidents increase by 438% since 2020.
In Massachusetts alone, the number of antisemitic incidents has increased by 188% since 2022.
State Sen. John Velis (D-Westfield) said he would have been surprised about these numbers two years ago, but as someone who has spent his time as the co-chair of the Legislature’s Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism over the past several months, the numbers were not shocking to him at all.
“We can’t accept this, and we can’t tolerate this,” Velis said. “We can’t say that we are the leaders of combating hatred for the nation and then sit back as this group is being abandoned and vilified.”
Of the 438 antisemitic incidents reported in Massachusetts last year, the ADL said 275 or 63% of them were related to Israel or Zionism. There were also 132 instances of verbal or written harassment and threats, 157 instances of vandalism, 37 appearances of antisemitic white supremacist propaganda, 87 times in which a swastika was discovered, 17 bomb threats and five assaults.
Although the “primary hot spots” for these incidents were identified in the eastern part of the state, Western Massachusetts — constituting Hampden, Franklin, Hampshire and Berkshire counties — saw an increase of incidents: from 49 in 2023 to 54 in 2024.
According to data from ADL, Northampton, Amherst and Springfield had the most incidents in the four counties. A lot of the disturbances in these cities were reported as harassment, but some came through as vandalism and at least one registered as assault.
Many of the incidents in Northampton and Amherst happened at their respective colleges — Smith College and the University of Massachusetts Amherst — a trend that reflects ADL’s assertion that the number of antisemitic incidents at college campuses increased more steeply than in any other location last year. Massachusetts had the third most campus incidents of any state with 107 of them.
In one instance at Smith College, an Israeli flag with a swastika spray-painted to replace the Star of David was discovered on campus, while another incident at UMass Amherst included a swastika drawn on a whiteboard hanging on the dorm room door of a Jewish student.
According to the ADL heat map, there were 33 antisemitic incidents in Springfield, Amherst and Northampton combined: an increase from the 26 in 2023.
For Adam Solender, the interim CEO of the Jewish Federation of Western Mass., the stark numbers were not a shock at all. In fact, he thinks there are even more cases that were not reported, based on experiences he has had talking with people on a daily basis.
“It’s not a surprise, especially given the fact that I don’t think that the vast majority of incidents are even recorded,” said Adam Solender, interim CEO of the Jewish Federation of Western Mass. “Whatever numbers they report, I think that it’s much like an iceberg, and you see the tip, but most of the iceberg is below the surface.”
When asked why he thinks there has been a profound increase in antisemitic incidents over the past several years, Solender said he believes the internet has empowered people to do damage to marginalized communities.
“The most rabid people out there seem to have an oversized voice in the court of media,” Solender said.
Velis introduced legislation in 2024 that led to the creation of the Legislature’s Special Commission on Combating Antisemitism, which was formed to conduct hearings and make recommendations on how the state can better support its Jewish residents and work to reduce the number of antisemitic incidents.
Although he is not Jewish and does not represent a district with a large number of Jewish residents, Velis said he was still inspired to advocate for this commission after a constituent pulled him aside one day and told him her 8-year-old daughter was afraid to say she was Jewish.
“What if that was my little guy who was 8 years old and afraid to say that he was a certain religion or belonged to any demographic,” Velis pondered. “That’s crazy.”
The ADL report has only reaffirmed the importance of the commission’s work, according to Velis, and has shown him that this issue infects the entire political spectrum.
“You’ve got antisemitism on the left, and you’ve got antisemitism on the right,” Velis said. “It is a whole-of-government approach that’s needed to combat it.”
A big part of that “whole-of-government” approach involves something that both Velis and Solender see eye-to-eye on: more education.
According to the senator, much of the commission’s work will include a deep dive on the K-12 curriculum to see where the gaps are when it comes to teaching history.
“I truly believe that one of the biggest tragedies in Massachusetts in the past 15 years is how we just don’t teach history the way we need to,” Velis said. “One of the lessons for me in this commission and these numbers is that if you are just talking about the Holocaust, you’re not doing a full breadth, and you’re not being expansive and robust enough in teaching about this.
“We need to teach about the Jewish people, the Jewish culture, the Jewish traditions,” he continued.
Velis said the commission plans to conduct hearings throughout the state until Nov. 30, which is when the body must submit their recommendations based on their findings.
In the meantime, Solender said people need to come together to fight back against these heinous acts.
“The Jewish community can’t fight this alone,” Solender said. “Whether the problem is on the left or the right, the problem is the problem.”
The Jewish Federation of Western Mass. encourages readers to immediately report any antisemitic incident in the community to these links: adl.org/report-incident and jewishwesternmass.org/security/.
