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WEEKLY REPORT

Antisemitic incident report: April 24-30

From spray-painted swastikas and hateful fliers to the arrest of a Holocaust-denying vandal and the sentencing of would-be terrorists aspiring to sabotage America’s power grid.

A door of Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Credit: Shutterstock.
A door of Anne Frank House in Amsterdam. Credit: Shutterstock.

JNS is beginning a weekly listing of antisemitic incidents recorded and found by Jewish, pro-Jewish and pro-Israel organizations; national and international news; and social media. By the Anti-Defamation League’s count, an average of seven instances of varying measure occur daily in the United States. (Dates refer to when the news was reported, not when the events took place.) Also included are news items detailing efforts to combat antisemitism and research anti-Jewish bigotry.

April 24

Antisemitic fliers arrived outside homes in Atlanta and San Anselmo, Calif. In Melbourne, Fla., a Jewish firefighter filed a federal complaint against his department alleging antisemitism. In Massachusetts, swastikas were drawn on a construction container in Framingham and near a Natick rail station. The only Orthodox Jewish student at Simmons University in Boston filed a complaint after her mezuzah was torn down. Two Neo-Nazis from Ohio were convicted and received long sentences for a plot to damage America’s power grid. And overseas, Australian teenagers were linked to a series of swastika spray-painting incidents; and Spanish neo-Nazis performed Hitler salutes while protesting the exhumation of a fascist leader’s remains in Madrid.

April 25

Police in Irving, Texas, investigated a series of political campaign signs vandalized with swastikas. Two events were reported in Europe: A former San Diego resident was arrested in Poland for allegedly projecting a Holocaust-denial message on the Anne Frank House in Amsterdam; and a British government diversity leader was forced to step down after his use of the slur “Zionazi” was unearthed.

The London offices of the Israel education organization StandWithUs were broken into on Yom Ha’atzmaut, April 26, 2023. Source: Twitter/StandWithUs.

April 26

Antisemitic graffiti was found in Pennsylvania, Maryland and at Davidson College in North Carolina. A lawsuit filed alleges that antisemitism was “rampant” on Tucker Carlson’s former Fox News show. In the United Kingdom, the office of StandWithUs in London was broken into on Israeli Independence Day.

April 27

In Florida, surveillance cameras caught a woman spray-painting a swastika on her neighbor’s truck. In Maryland, Montgomery County Schools held an event to address the increase of hate crimes in the district, and an activist group released a 13-page report on antisemitism at the City University of New York. Jewish professional wrestler Simon Miller spoke out about antisemitism in his profession. A neo-Nazi soldier stationed at North Carolina’s Fort Bragg pleaded guilty to gun charges, and a New Hampshire teen was charged with 22 civil-rights violations for his antisemitic and homophobic vandalism. A judge in Brazil temporarily suspended the encrypted communications app Telegram in the country for failing to assist in investigations into neo-Nazi chat rooms.

April 28

At Shoreham-Wading River High School in New York, swastikas were found carved into desks. On Canada’s Prince Edward’s Island, antisemitic and racist graffiti was found at a curling club. In the United Kingdom, a 20-year-old antisemitic white nationalist, Vaughn Dolphin, was convicted of spreading materials for committing acts of terrorism; and a 15-year-old, who had bomb-making instruction materials, confessed to assaulting three girls before posting videos of them emblazoned with swastikas. In the Bloomfield Hills School District in Michigan, both the principal and superintendent resigned after pushback following their approval of an anti-Israel speaker. (Read more JNS coverage of the latter.)

April 29

Kentucky’s governor declared April 29 “End Jew-Hatred Day” in the state, and Las Vegas opted into the same initiative as a city. Oregon renamed “Swastika Mountain” after an American Indian chief. In Boston, the neo-Nazi group Patriot Front protested a Satanism convention. Adidas faces a lawsuit for ending its deal with “Ye” (Kanye West) over his antisemitic statements. The Netherlands announced that antisemitic incidents had risen domestically and that in 2025, it aims to open archives of investigations of alleged Nazi collaborators.

April 30

The Guardian apologized after publishing an antisemitic cartoon, which was not the first time, notes Honest Reporting. Brazil lifted its ban on Telegram (see April 27 above), but imposed a daily fine of more than $200,000. Adolf Hitler’s charred body was found on this day in 1945, notes UPI.

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