San Jose, CA — The Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC) is deeply alarmed and saddened by the egregious antisemitic incident that took place at Branham High School last week. This antisemitic act, which is being investigated by local police as a hate crime, has shaken Jewish families across Northern California and beyond. Such a brazen public display of Nazi symbols, publicized through a student’s Instagram account, which included the photo and quoted a famous speech by Adolf Hitler about annihilation of the Jews (the post has been taken down due to the hateful content), created intense fear in the community. 

Unfortunately, this is not an isolated incident. Over the past two years, the BAJC has received and addressed approximately 500 antisemitic incidents in local K-12 schools, including several at Branham and other high schools in this district. The sharp uptick in antisemitic incidents mirrors a larger trend documented throughout the country and California in particular: the FBI’s 2023 hate-crime report shows that 60% of all religiously motivated hate crimes in the United States targeted Jews, even though Jews make up just 2% of the U.S. population. The California Department of Justice 2023 data show that 15% of all reported hate crimes have Jewish victims, but Jews make up only 3% of California’s population. Locally, many Jewish residents say they no longer feel safe being visibly Jewish, for example, wearing a Star of David necklace, kippah, or placing a menorah in their window during Hanukkah. 

We appreciate the principal’s acknowledgement that this incident reflects a deeper problem in the school and her willingness to work with our organization and other local Jewish organizations to address the issue through education and dialogue. 

From our work with Bay Area schools in recent years, as well as the research, we know that many students do not receive adequate Holocaust or genocide education. This leaves them vulnerable to misinformation, historical distortion, and hate-filled content circulating online. 

We have seen a disturbing rise in the weaponization of the Holocaust, including Holocaust inversion, where Nazi genocide is falsely equated with the current geopolitical conflict in Gaza. Such rhetoric normalizes Nazi imagery and makes incidents like this one, and others in this and neighboring districts, more likely. 

The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) has documented a 623% increase in antisemitic incidents in California’s K–12 schools over the last decade. It is heartbreaking that children should be harassed, threatened, excluded, and even assaulted in the very places that are supposed to teach inclusion, tolerance, and respect of our diverse society. The sharp rise in school-based antisemitism underscores the need for the newly passed student antisemitism law, which seeks to protect Jewish students from hateful content and discrimination in the classroom. 

We hope that what happened at Branham serves as a wake-up call for California and for the rest of the country to take the antisemitism crisis seriously and reverse the trend through real, meaningful action and long-term change.

Press contact: Tali Klima, media.BAJC@gmail.com