Religious Intolerance

Record-High Antisemitic Hate Crimes Reported In 2023 As Israel-Hamas War Rages On, FBI Finds

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The number of reported antisemitic hate crime offenses climbed to an all-time high in 2023, with the uptick largely coinciding with the beginning of the Israel-Hamas war, according to new FBI statistics released Monday.

Anti-Jewish hate crimes were up more than 50% in 2023, totaling 1,951 offenses compared to 1,257 in 2022, according to the FBI’s hate crime analysis data. Reports of antisemitism spiked in October of 2023 when Hamas launched its devastating attack on Israel, which killed 1,200 people and sparked countless pro-Gaza protests across the U.S.

The highest number of antisemitic crimes reported in 2022 happened in May with 162 total offenses, according to the report. In November of 2023, that number hit 389, the highest amount for a single month since the FBI first began reporting anti-Jewish incidents in 1991.

Overall hate crimes rose slightly in 2023 to 12,355 total reports compared to 12,186 in 2022, the data shows. Anti-Jewish incidents made up the second-largest single-bias portion of all hate crimes in 2023, only falling behind anti-black hate crimes.

College campuses in particular became a hotspot for anti-Jewish incidents, with violent protests and encampments leading to hundreds of arrests and culminating into a multitude of lawsuits over universities’ response. Harvard, New York University (NYU) and the University of California Los Angeles all faced lawsuits for allegedly failing to protect Jewish students from antisemitism on campus, and many Jewish students are choosing to avoid universities such as Columbia which hosted some of the most intense anti-Israel protests last spring.

The FBI hate crime data was collected through its Uniform Crime Reporting Program, which relies on agencies to voluntarily self-report their data.

“At a time when the Jewish community is still suffering from the sharp rise in antisemitism following Hamas’s Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, the record-high number of anti-Jewish hate crime incidents is unfortunately entirely consistent with the Jewish community’s experience and ADL’s tracking,” Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, said in a statement. “Hate crimes are uniquely harmful, traumatizing both the individual and their community.”

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