US anti-Muslim incidents rose about 70% in first half of 2024 amid Gaza war

Washington: Discrimination and attacks against Muslims and Palestinians rose by about 70 per cent in the US in the first half of 2024 amid heightened Islamophobia due to Israel's war in Gaza, the Council on American-Islamic Relations advocacy group said on Tuesday.

Human rights advocates have reported a global rise in Islamophobia, anti-Palestinian bias and antisemitism since the eruption in October of the Israel-Gaza war which has killed tens of thousands and caused a humanitarian crisis.

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 per cent 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 in the whole year, including about 3,600 in the last three months after the war broke out.

Alarming US 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 US, 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.

The latest bloodshed in the decades-old Israeli-Palestinian conflict was triggered on Oct. 7 when Palestinian Islamist group Hamas attacked Israel, killing 1,200 and taking about 250 hostages, according to Israeli tallies.

The Gaza health ministry says that since then Israel's military assault on the Hamas-governed enclave has killed nearly 40,000 Palestinians while also displacing nearly the entire population of 2.3 million, causing a hunger crisis and leading to genocide allegations that Israel denies.

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.