Research & Analysis

Over the weekend of April 5, 2024, anti-Israel activists in the US and around the world marked Al Quds Day (“Jerusalem Day”) with protests and other events against Zionism and the state of Israel. This annual event, originally conceived by the leader of the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, serves as a platform for support for terrorism and other violence against Israel and regularly includes virulent antisemitic and anti-Zionist…

CW: This piece contains reference to rape and sexual assault In the wake of the October 7 terror attack in Israel, horrific details began to emerge of Hamas assailants brutalizing Israeli women and girls, parading their broken bodies through the streets, and concertgoers being raped and murdered in front of their friends. By November, videos and eyewitness testimony were widely available to the public, showing and describing Hamas terrorists using rape as a weapon of war.    …

Daniel Haqiqatjou is an antisemite and conspiracy theorist who also spreads anti-LGBTQ+ and misogynistic rhetoric. He is the founder, editor-in-chief and contributor at the Muslim Skeptic, an online magazine that frequently elevates antisemitic tropes and antisemitic conspiracy theories under the guise of legitimate criticism of Israel or Jewish law.     Haqiqatjou has praised Hamas and its October 7, 2023, terror attack on Israel across his social media profiles and shared age…

Conspiracy theories and antisemitic narratives have flooded social media in the wake of an Islamic State-claimed terror attack at a music venue outside Moscow.  On March 22, 2024, four gunmen attacked concertgoers at Crocus City Hall, shooting into the crowd and using explosives to set the building on fire, killing at least 130 people and injuring at least 140 others.  Hours after the attack, the Amaq News Agency, a propaganda arm of the Islamic State (IS or ISIS), claimed…

Part of the ADL Center on Extremism’s coverage of the misogynist manosphere and its subcultures, each of which impacts women’s experiences of safety and equity – online and offline.     Men Going Their Own Way (MGTOW) is a distinct faction of the “manosphere,” the broad set of male supremacist, anti-feminist, misogynist and sometimes violent extremist movements that exist largely online. The MGTOW movement began online in the early 2000s when…

On March 13, 2024, the U.S. House of Representatives passed a bill that could potentially lead to a nationwide ban of the popular social media platform TikTok. According to the bill, the issue stems from TikTok being owned by a “foreign adversary,” which poses a national security threat. TikTok’s China-owned parent company ByteDance would be required to find another buyer within six months to avoid the app being pulled from app stores in the US. While the bill has not yet…

Friday, March 8, 2024, marked the annual commemoration of International Women’s Day. Over the weekend of March 8–10, anti-Israel activists nationwide used the occasion to celebrate female Palestinian terrorists, including glorifying individuals affiliated with recognized terrorist organizations and whose acts of anti-Israel violence have included bombings, plane hijackings and more.   As previously noted by ADL, in the months since Hamas’s October 7, 2023 attack on…

The U.S. wing of Hizb Ut Tahrir, an international Islamist organization that seeks to establish an Islamic theocracy, held their annual conference on March 2, 2024, in Villa Park, Illinois.   The group, which is banned in the United Kingdom, Germany and several other countries, featured speakers who called for an army to invade and destroy Israel, justified the October 7 Hamas terror attack, suggested men should travel to Gaza to fight Israel, implored followers to “resist…

On March 9, 2024, authorities arrested Frankie Rizzello Jr., a 20-year-old resident of Chesterfield, Missouri, on two felony charges related to property damage motivated by discrimination, one grounded in religion and the other in race. According to charging documents from the University City Police Department, Rizzello faces these charges for allegedly spray-painting a church and an Asian restaurant with graffiti in 2023.   In October 2023, after an extensive examination of user…

Research from ADL has documented in detail the rise in antisemitism and anti-Zionism in the weeks and months following Hamas’s brutal assault on Israel on October 7, 2023. One of the most insidious claims used to discredit both Jews and Israel is that Ashkenazi Jews (i.e., Jews who trace their ancestry to Northern and Eastern Europe) have no historical or genetic relationship to Jewish antiquity in the land of Israel—making Jews “colonizers” with no legitimate claim to…

On February 25, 2024, Aaron Bushnell, an active-duty member of the U.S. Air Force, approached the Israeli Embassy in Washington, D.C., and set himself on fire to protest the ongoing Israel-Hamas war, saying he would “no longer be complicit in genocide.” His act of protest has garnered praise from anti-Israel groups and foreign terrorist organizations (FTOs).  Bushnell is the second person to self-immolate in front of a U.S.-based Israeli government building in protest of the…

UPDATE: April 26, 2024 Explicit support for recognized terror groups and the glorification of prominent individuals affiliated with those groups continues to feature prominently at anti-Israel protests across the country. As documented by ADL, notable recent examples of this support for terror have surfaced at “Popular University for Gaza” campus encampments and Quds Day protests in April 2024 and at International Women’s Day protests in March 2024. There have been numerous…

The Nation of Islam (NOI) held its annual Saviours’ Day conference at the Huntington Place convention center in Detroit, Michigan, on February 22–25. As in years past, the event featured significant antisemitism, including from longtime NOI leader and keynote speaker Louis Farrakhan.  Farrakhan’s keynote address concluding the conference on Sunday, titled “What Does Allah, the Great Mahdi and the Great Messiah Have to Say About the War in the Middle East,”…

Preliminary research by the ADL Center on Extremism (COE) shows Genesse Moreno, who opened fire at Joel Osteen’s Lakewood Church in Houston, Texas, on February 11, 2024, before being killed by off-duty officers, expressed support for a range of antisemitic, anti-Zionist and extremist beliefs and praised U.S.-designated terrorist groups, including Hamas and Hezbollah. Moreno’s mother reportedly attended the church, but it is unclear why Moreno targeted Lakewood in the attack that…

The Foundation to Combat Antisemitism (FCAS), a non-profit organization founded by Robert Kraft, aired multiple advertisements during the Super Bowl on February 11, 2024, urging people to #StandUpToJewishHate. Notably, a new ad premiered during the game, featuring Dr. Clarence B. Jones, former advisor to and speech writer for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.  Although online reactions to the campaign were largely positive, many users on X (formerly Twitter) were quick to criticize the…

Though Salafi-jihadist groups like the Islamic State (IS) and Al-Qaeda (AQ) have a long and well-established history of making calls for violence against Jews, over the last few months they have capitalized on the momentum of the Israel-Hamas war to broadcast violent messaging, justify hateful rhetoric against the state of Israel and denigrate Jews around the world. Using their official media outlets, as well as supporter-produced propaganda, both the Islamic State and Al-Qaeda have called on…

In the aftermath of October 7, 2023, and the start of the Israel-Hamas war, some anti-Israel activists have boldly expressed support for terrorism against the State of Israel and Jews, which at first manifested in explicitly supporting Hamas. More recently, these activists and leftist groups have also expressed admiration for another group they consider allies in the fight against U.S. imperialism and Zionism: the Houthis. The Houthis, an Iranian-regime backed U.S.-designated terrorist…