While researching the things that I wrote around the time of the Iraqi invasion, I came across a post from March of 2003 that linked to this disturbing news article from the same time:
Assaults, vandalism and other anti-Jewish attacks in the Bay Area rose to an all-time high in 2002, according to a report issued Wednesday by the Anti- Defamation League.
The report found not just a troubling spike in the number of anti- Semitic incidents in Northern California — from 13 to 118, more than half of which reportedly took place in San Francisco and Alameda counties — but also in the severity of some of the attacks.
In May, Beth Jacob Congregation in Oakland was set afire in an arson attack, sustaining an estimated $10,000 in damage. Two other synagogues, in San Francisco and Berkeley, reported suspected arson attempts, while individuals reported being physically assaulted in Berkeley, San Francisco and Sacramento, according to the report.
More than two-thirds of the incidents involved assaults or acts of vandalism, according to the report.
So, how many hundreds of percent is it to go from 13 to 118? A little over a 900% increase?
Nationwide, there were 1,559 anti-Semitic acts reported in 2002, from graffiti and harassing phone calls to more serious incidents such as an attempted bombing and seven cemetery desecrations, according to the Anti- Defamation League report. The 2002 total was an increase from 1,432 incidents in 2001 but still well below the peak of 2,066 incidents in 1994. The group has been tracking such incidents since 1982.
California, particularly San Francisco and the rest of the Bay Area, helped to drive the national increase last year, Bernstein said. In California, the number of incidents nearly doubled, from 122 last year to 223 this year, he said, while San Francisco hit an all-time high with 35 anti-Semitic incidents reported in 2002.
As always, whenever there are attacks on Jews, the news is minimized by the media. Sure, it’s a huge increase, and sure, attacks on Jews are up nationwide, but hey, it’s not nearly as bad as it was eight years previously.
Like that effing matters.
The story is still on the Chronicle’s website. And I find myself just as outraged today as when I wrote about it more than four years ago.
However,someone looking cross-eyed at an Arab-American will precipitate headlines and national soul searching.
I live in San Francisco. And it was the synagogue adjacent to my kids’ school (a K-8 Jewish day school) that was the target of an attempted firebombing that year. The school had 2 bomb threats called into it soon afterwards… we were there for one of them – tons of police and bomb-sniffing dogs. Neither of those incidents got much press at the time…
Those were bad, bad times, and now we have security guards and a fence around the whole school. And my son covers his kippah with a cap and tucks in his tzitzit when he rides the MUNI. All in lovely, tolerant San Francisco…