San Diego City Councilman Raul Campillo will join Jewish leaders Thursday to denounce recent acts of antisemitism and ask for the public's help in identifying the perpetrators.
San Diego has seen multiple antisemitic flyering incidents in recent months largely taking place in District 7, represented by Campillo. According to his office, under current law, the city attorney has limited ability to prosecute these incidents of hateful littering.
The Councilman, Jewish leaders, and anti-antisemitism activists "are united in support of action that can help bring justice and an end to these antisemitic hate incidents," a statement from Campillo's office said. He will be joined Thursday by Liora Rez, executive director of StopAntisemitism, Fabienne Perlov, regional director of Anti-Defamation League San Diego and Rabbi Devorah Marcus, senior rabbi at Temple Emanu-El and former chair of the San Diego Rabbinical.
In July, antisemitic flyers were found on car windshields on Zion and Archwood streets in the Allied Gardens area. Just days before, a rabbi was assaulted at a convenience store near San Diego State.
"We are horrified to hear a member of the San Diego Chabad Jewish Center at San Diego State University has been assaulted," wrote the organization StopAntisemitism on X, formerly known as Twitter. "The attacker ripped the victim's tzitzit (a traditional Jewish garment) and yelled antisemitic slurs. In March, the same Chabad's menorah was vandalized."
Earlier this year, the San Diego County Board of Supervisors signed a resolution denouncing antisemitic rhetoric and hate crimes, citing rising antisemetic crimes in recent years.
Then-Supervisor Nathan Fletcher and Vice Chair Terra Lawson-Remer introduced the resolution.
According to county data, in 2021, the Jewish community in San Diego experienced 38 recorded incidents of antisemitism, including 14 cases of vandalism, 23 incidents of harassment and one assault. On April 27, 2019, Chabad of Poway synagogue was the site of an antisemetic shooting in which one person was killed and three were injured.
In 2020 the Federal Bureau of Investigation reported a 6% increase in hate crimes from the previous year, representing the highest total in 12 years, and found that attacks against Jews or Jewish institutions made up nearly 60% of all religious-based hate crimes.
Despite this trend, a report by the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University, San Bernardino, found that San Diego was one of just a handful of American cities where hate crimes had decreased, with many other posting double-digit percentage point increases. However, nationally, hate crimes against people of the Jewish faith had increased 28%, according to the center.
In the San Diego Association of Governments' annual crime report, which covers the county, hate crimes increased by 9%. In the city of San Diego, hate crimes dropped by 17.4%, according to the San Diego Police Department's figures.
