CAIR experiences file 8,658 discrimination complaints in 2024 as warfare in Gaza stirred up Islamophobia.
Discrimination and assaults in opposition to Muslims and Arabs in the USA hit a brand new file in 2024 amid the Israel-Gaza warfare, an advocacy group has reported.
A report launched by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) on Tuesday stated that the 8,658 complaints relating to anti-Muslim and anti-Arab incidents final yr – representing a 7.4 p.c rise yr on yr – was the best quantity for the reason that group started compiling information in 1996.
Complaints relating to employment discrimination have been the commonest at 15.4 p.c of the overall. Complaints relating to immigration and asylum constituted 14.8 p.c, training 9.8 p.c and hate crimes 7.5 p.c.
Rights advocates have highlighted a rise in Islamophobia, anti-Arab bias and anti-Semitism for the reason that Hamas assault in October 2023 noticed Israel launch a devastating onslaught on Gaza.
“For the second yr in a row, the US-backed Gaza genocide drove a wave of Islamophobia in the USA,” CAIR stated.
Israel denies genocide and warfare crimes accusations.
Final month, a person was discovered responsible of a hate crime for the deadly stabbing of a six-year-old Palestinian American boy 18 months in the past.
Different alarming incidents since late 2023 embody the tried drowning of a three-year-old Palestinian American lady in Texas, the stabbing of a Palestinian American man, additionally in Texas, the beating of a Muslim man in New York, and the taking pictures of two Israeli guests, whom a suspect mistook to be Palestinian, in Florida.
College protest crackdown
CAIR additionally famous a crackdown on pro-Palestine protests on college campuses.
Demonstrators have for months demanded an finish to US help for Israel. By way of the summer season of 2024, courses have been cancelled, college directors resigned, and pupil protesters have been suspended and arrested.
Notable incidents embody violent arrests by police of protesters at Columbia College and a mob assault on pro-Palestinian protesters on the College of California, Los Angeles.
President Donald Trump has demanded a step-up in motion in opposition to the protests.
Mahmoud Khalil, a Palestinian graduate pupil who served as a negotiator between pro-Palestine protesters and Columbia College in New York’s administration, was arrested this week by immigration officers regardless of holding a everlasting residency inexperienced card.
Trump has written on social media that Khalil’s was “the primary arrest of many”.
“We all know there are extra college students at Columbia and different Universities throughout the nation who’ve engaged in pro-terrorist, anti-Semitic, anti-American exercise, and the Trump Administration won’t tolerate it,” he added.
Govt Director of CAIR New York Afaf Nasher condemned the arrest as a “stunning escalation” that “units a harmful precedent and threatens the civil liberties of all”.