Hate incidents are on the rise. Arizona religious leaders share how they're confronting them

Interview from KJZZ’s The Show, May 20, 2025.

The Anti-Defamation League reports there were more than 9,300 incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault in the U.S. last year, a more than 300% increase from half a decade ago. Arizona has also seen an increase in antisemitic incidents.

But, it’s not just antisemitism that’s been on the rise. Experts say there’s been an increase of lots of kinds of hate over the past few years. Reverend Katie Sexton, executive director of the Arizona Faith Network, and Rabbi Andy Green of Congregation Or Tzion in Scottsdale say that’s dangerous for everyone.

Sexton and Green wrote an op-ed on this that was published in the Arizona Mirror and joined “The Show” to discuss how they define hate.

Full conversation

KATIE SEXTON: That is a great question and I think it's one that is kind of being redefined right now in our society as we're we're seeing a lot of changes in how we are having intolerance of of one another, through our leadership in politics and in a lot of civic organizations, nonprofits, and even religious institutions.

For me, hate is really just a complete intolerance, just bigotry of, of another group or people. And a lot of times that, it's hard not to jump right to the violence for me because that's, that's where we've been in, in the interfaith space. We've been living in the prevention of violence space and reaction to violence space. But I bet rabbi has a better definition than I do.

ANDY GREEN: I'm not sure if I would define differently, but just to add to what Reverend Sexton shared, there's an element of blame and scapegoating that happens when an individual or group is hated, and often it's related to people trying to weaponize the suffering and struggle of individuals, you know, as we face tough economic conditions, being able to say it's not your fault, it's them or it's that person, that leader, it's that group.

And then motivate individuals to, to act out on that hatred, on that bigotry, on that anger concerning their own situation. And all of us are comforted when we're told that the suffering we experience is not our fault.

MARK BRODIE: It's interesting the point you make about sort of getting others to act on it and maybe acting on it yourself as well, because that seems to sort of go, speak to the idea of, you know, protected hate speech versus not protected hate action.

GREEN: One of the blessings of our Constitution is freedom of speech, that our First Amendment allows us to express ourselves and to express opinions and positions that are unpopular. I think one of the challenges of that is often that people will defend hateful rhetoric will defend foolish speech by being able to say, “it's free speech, I'm free to express myself.”

And that when we fail to challenge speech that is foolish, speech that is bigoted, speech that motivates hateful actions, and call that out, there's a great danger there.

When somebody says something that is demonstrably false, when somebody blames another group for their problems, when somebody targets the Jewish faith, for example, and I have myself been targeted with threats by individuals who genuinely believe that their suffering is due to me and to my community, even though I promise you, we have no power when it comes to this particular individual, and that before being approached and threatened by them, I had never heard of their circumstance or of them.

BRODIE: So, Reverend Sexton, how do you sort of look at that line that Rabbi Green was talking about in terms of being able to express yourself, which of course the First Amendment allows all of us to do and protects the ability of all of us to do, versus taking it that next step and maybe leading someone or yourself to do something or just maybe fostering an environment in which it's considered acceptable to commit some kind of hate act against a person or group.

SEXTON: Yeah, echoing that we, we have every right to hold any belief, and we have every right to hold any opinion or speech in our lives. That's, that's who we are as America. But we're seeing this play out in real life right now in front of us. We've seen this play out since Jan. 6, for instance. We've seen this play out on our news screens every day, too, of where folks are moving this hate and blame that rabbi was talking about into action and retribution for these false beliefs of others causing pain or taking away. Or just by their presence or their identity or their race that they are then taking something, the scarcity mindset that we're seeing in our culture from someone else.

And so it is that line of where speech moves to action or threats or makes people feel like their liberties are threatened. We all have the right to feel safe, to feel free, to be able to move throughout our lives on a daily basis without feeling like we're going to be harmed just for who we are, how we worship, or how we identify.

BRODIE: Rabbi Green, I wanna ask if you have the sense that not within the Jewish community necessarily, but in the broader community, do people understand what antisemitism is and maybe to an extent what it isn't?

GREEN: The answer is no. A big part of that is that antisemitism in and of itself is a confusing word. It refers to hatred of Jews. But often because of its technical language, and the term was originally coined by German academics who hated Jews to sound highfalutin and academic and justified. That is where the term comes from. And that anti-Semitism exists not only, in the expression of hatred of Jews for being Jews, but also in the stereotyping of all Jews as being monolithic and a force that is against whatever a person values.

One of the things that's dangerous about antisemitism, and I think on some level, all forms of hatred, is the way in which whatever somebody values is projected on those that are hated. So in the case of the Jewish community, right, you saw folks in Charlottesville chanting, “the Jews will not replace us.” These were white supremacists who saw Jews as the ultimate race polluters, because for them, race and, and purity of white bloodline is important, and Jews, some of us look white, but to them we're not white.

And then you see it in some of the antisemitism that exists on the far left, that Jews are the whitest whites who ever whited, right? That, there's a projection on what happens in Israel right now in the current war of race dynamics in America that don't actually match the experience of Israelis and Palestinians. And that this reflects the way in which so often antisemitism is about the projection of whatever a person finds as evil onto the Jewish idea.

BRODIE: Does it make it more difficult to try to combat anti-Semitism when as you say, it's a little bit confusing as to what exactly constitutes it?

GREEN: I think that combating antisemitism involves confronting the reality that all antisemitism is a conspiracy theory, that it is rooted in the idea that Jews are demonic or superhuman, or have some power beyond the power that we have.

Believe me, if Jews actually controlled the courts and controlled Hollywood, and controlled all these different things that antisemites often claim that we do, we wouldn't see the same rise in anti-Jewish hatred and bigotry that we found.

BRODIE: What have you seen in your work in terms of not just increases in antisemitism, which have been pretty well documented, but an increase in hate against all sorts of groups, religious or otherwise?

SEXTON: Yeah, the religious-based hate and other hate against community groups has really changed and grown over the last few years. It's really changed since, to be honest, January. We have seen this year …

BRODIE: January of this year?

SEXTON: January of this year. And we've seen just in this year churches down in the Tucson area and down to the border have a hate and attacks and trespassers within them that are seeking to help migrants, for example.

And these are congregations that are predominantly Christian, predominantly white, predominantly middle class or upper class that have been doing immigration and refugee and asylum seeker ministry for decades that are now under threat like they have never been before. And to be honest, they don't know how to respond.

BRODIE: So what do we do about this? Like, what is the answer? Because you can't force someone to think something that they don't. So like what do we do about this?

SEXTON: You know, one of our great teachers in my denomination is [the Reverend Dr. William J. Barber II], who leads the Poor People's Campaign, and he refers to this, as Martin Luther King Jr. did, Reverend Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., as a morality problem, right?

One thing we're doing at Arizona Faith Network in partnership with the ADL here. In Arizona, the JCRC and our LGBTQ+ community, One Community, as we've started what we're calling a … Safe Communities Coalition, my apologies, and this coalition is bringing together historically disenfranchised and targeted groups.

So our LGBTQ+community, our religious minorities, so the Jewish, the Muslim communities, it's bringing together our Indigenous communities, and so many more to a table where we're both info sharing and employing some intel analysts to be watching just the folks that we know are KKK members here in the state or members of other hate groups and doing a deeper dive hate watch. And so we gather now monthly to intel share and then also rapid respond when incidents happen.

BRODIE: Rabbi Green, what do you think is the answer here? What do we do about this?

GREEN: I think that, two things. First is that I think that the victims of hatred shouldn't be responsible for preventing it. And that it is an unfair expectation, for example, for to blame the Jewish community for antisemitism, that in itself is an antisemitic idea. To blame the communities of color for racism is unfair.

And, and to say that it is on those communities to respond in some way and to educate, and if only we had one more, if I invited this KKK member to my house for a Sabbath dinner, they would see the beauty of Jewish community and Jewish life, and they would think, wow, everything that I've taught, everything that I've believed up until this time is wrong, which of course, there are instances and stories of precisely that happening, but it's dangerous for us to think that that responsibility rests on the victims of this kind of hatred.

The second thing is, what can we actually do? We can have conversations, we can try not to express judgment about an entire group of people based on the individual that we know, or the few individuals that we have seen on, amplified in media, who so often are not representative of a community, but representative of particular extremes in lots of different respects.

SEXTON: Yeah. And just to add to that, too, I think one thing we really can do is hold people accountable. I think we have to hold one another accountable, we have to hold our communities accountable, and especially we have to hold our elected officials accountable.

BRODIE: So, I want to end by asking each of you if you see reasons for optimism in  the community. I mean, we've been talking a lot about how much horrible stuff is happening with all sorts of hatred, antisemitism, and otherwise. Reverend Sexton, do you see reasons for optimism?

SEXTON: I always do. I am an optimist by nature and so for me, it always comes down to the individuals, to the people that we are still able to sit down and have coffee with and talk about and, you know, within my own family, we have such different political opinions and yet we love one another and still are able to sit down at the table.

I think right now we are in a struggle of defining really who we are and who we are going to be as a community and a country, and that in and of itself is hopeful. The fact that we are naming these things is hopeful because it means we are struggling with what is being said. And if we were just being quiet and we weren't stressed or worried about any of this, then that means we have given up.

And so there is hope in the struggle, there is hope in what's coming next, and there is hope in all of the relationships we hold dear.

BRODIE: Rabbi Green, do you, do you see reasons for hope, reasons for optimism?

GREEN: It has been much harder to be a Jew publicly, particularly since Oct. 7, 2023. And the way in which vitriol and blame for the Jewish community, targeting the Jewish community. I was feeling much more hopeful a couple years ago than I am now, doesn't mean that things won't get better, and there are certainly signs for hope.

I think that Americans understand that the Jewish community is vulnerable, the Jews didn't steal land in 1948, that Israel deserves to exist entirely independently of the genocide that targeted the Jewish people just years before in the Holocaust.

People are feeling, in my community, a great deal of fear. But the things that give me hope are that our government here in the United States and also the Jewish nation, the Jewish state in Israel exist and see themselves as protectors of Jewish community against those that hate us, instead of encouraging that hate and targeting the Jewish community, the way that most governments that Jews lived under prior to this century, experienced.

And so though there are many comparisons that those in my community have made to the rise of Nazism, nearly 100 years ago and comparing it to this time. Those fundamental differences, the fact that our police are here to protect me when I'm targeted with a death threat, rather than to encourage those who hate me. That is a huge difference, and a reason to hope, and a reason to understand that we're in a much better place than we were.

Mark Brodie is a co-host of The Show, KJZZ’s locally produced news magazine. Since starting at KJZZ in 2002, Brodie has been a host, reporter and producer, including several years covering the Arizona Legislature, based at the Capitol.

KJZZ's The Show transcripts are created on deadline. This text is edited for length and clarity, and may not be in its final form. The authoritative record of KJZZ's programming is the audio record.