Two antisemitic incidents — a “threatening” Instagram meme and graffiti scrawled at the University of Pittsburgh’s campus — were reported this week to the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh, bringing 2023’s number of incidents to 242, nearly twice the total reported last year.

Security officials released the information Thursday morning, as Pitt’s chapter of Students for Justice in Palestine circulated flyers promoting a 3 p.m. walk-out, dubbed “Shut It Down for Palestine,” at Carnegie Mellon University.

The meme, which multiple officials called “threatening,” was shared repeatedly this week on Instagram and Snapchat, and encouraged pro-Israel students to “look into this camera,” which was a loaded gun, said Shawn Brokos, director of security for the federation and a retired 24-year FBI veteran.

The post had been taken down from social-media networks as of Thursday morning. Brokos said any threat related to the post “had been mitigated.”

“The image would have been alarming to anyone if it was directed toward them,” said Kelly Fishman, director of the Anti-Defamation League region that includes the western half of Pennsylvania, as well as Ohio, West Virginia and Kentucky. “To me, as a 41-year-old woman, it was a scary image.”

On Tuesday, vandals scrawled antisemitic and anti-Israel language on the side of a box truck parked near the intersection of Forbes Avenue and Bigelow Boulevard in the heart of Pitt’s campus, Brokos said. The truck had been parked near the William Pitt Union.

A Pitt spokesman was not immediately available for comment Thursday morning.

Brokos said there has been “significant activity,” none of it devolving into physical violence, on the city’s college campuses since Hamas militants stormed southern Israel on Oct. 7, killing and injuring thousands and kidnapping nearly 250 civilians.

An estimated 8,000 to 10,000 Palestinians have been killed in Israel’s counterattacks on Gaza in the weeks following the attacks.

There have been at least 683 antisemitic incidents nationwide since the Oct. 7 attacks, said Fishman, citing Anti-Defamation League data.

The Secure Community Network, a national Jewish safety group, logged 772 incident nationwide in October, up from 368 in October 2022, Brokos said.

SCN estimates that nearly one-fifth of those incidents, including violence and death-threat reports, have occurred on college campuses, she said.

Locally, in places such as Pittsburgh, Fishman said antisemitic incidents are happening so fast the ADL has been unable to track reliable numbers.

“Unfortunately, there’s just so much coming in — swastikas on bike paths, language on social media. There’s so much happening right now,” she said. “I think everyone is just working overtime right now to make sure our communities stay safe.”

Pittsburgh police announced Oct. 31 they were increasing patrols in Squirrel Hill, the city’s center of Jewish life, following the second incident of antisemitic vandalism appearing in that neighborhood in under a week.

Graffiti had been scrawled on the sidewalks at a parklet in the Summerset at Frick housing development Oct. 31, police spokeswoman Cara Cruz said. Several tires on nearby cars also were slashed.

Cruz said police “are investigating, working to identify a suspect or suspects, as well as having the graffiti removed.”

Cruz did not reply Thursday to multiple requests for comment on the new incidents.

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