The United States observed a 70% jump in discrimination and attacks against Muslims and Palestinians in the first half of 2024, an advocacy group said Tuesday.
The Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) pointed fingers at Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza as the reason behind the heightened Islamophobia.
Human rights advocates have reported a global rise in Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian bias and antisemitism since the war broke out last October.
Israel has killed over 39,300 Gazans since a Hamas incursion on Oct. 7 caused around 1,900 deaths.
In the first six months of 2024, CAIR said it received 4,951 complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian incidents, a rise of nearly 70% compared with the same period in 2023.
Most of the complaints were in the categories of immigration and asylum, employment discrimination, education discrimination and hate crimes, CAIR said.
In 2023, CAIR documented 8,061 such complaints, including about 3,600 in the last three months after the war broke out.
Alarming U.S. incidents in the last nine months include the fatal October stabbing of a 6-year-old Palestinian-American child in Illinois, the February stabbing of a Palestinian-American man in Texas, the shooting of three students of Palestinian descent in Vermont in November and the attempted drowning of a 3-year-old Palestinian-American girl in May.
There have been numerous protests in the U.S., Israel’s key ally, against the war in Gaza since October. The CAIR report noted the crackdown by police and university authorities on pro-Palestinian protests and encampments on campuses.
CAIR says it compiles numbers by reviewing public statements and videos as well as reports from public calls, emails and an online complaint system. It also contacts people whose incidents are reported by media.
