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A municipal worker cleans swastikas spray painted on columns of the Rivoli Street in central Paris on October 11, 2020. (STEPHANE DE SAKUTIN/AFP)
Coronavirus lockdowns last year shifted some anti-Semitic hatred online, where conspiracy theories blaming Jews for the pandemic’s medical and economic devastation abounded, including likening Israeli and Jewish executives in vaccine companies to the Nazis, Israeli researchers reported Wednesday. That has raised concerns about a rise in anti-Semitism in the post-pandemic world.
The findings, which came in an annual report by Tel Aviv University’s researchers on anti-Semitism, show that the social isolation of the pandemic meant that Jews weren’t generally in close physical proximity to people who wished to harm them.