Antisemitic incidents jumped 63% in 2023, according to FBI data
Police separate Israel supporters and pro-Palestinian demonstrators in Times Square, New York City, October 13, 2023. (Luke Tress)
(JTA) — Jews were targeted in 1,832 hate crimes last year, far more than any other religious group and a steep increase over 2022, according to FBI data released on Monday.
The number of anti-Jewish hate crimes last year, when Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel sparked a spike in antisemitism worldwide, represented a 63% increase over 2022, when there were 1,122 incidents reported.
Jews, who make up about 2.5% of the U.S. population, are regularly targeted more often than any other religious group, according to the FBI’s data. In 2023, Jews were targeted in 68% of all hate crimes motivated by religion, and in 15% of the total 11,862 hate crimes tallied against all groups. That total number of incidents is an increase of about 250 from 2022.
“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,” said Jonathan Greenblatt, CEO of the Anti-Defamation League, which has also recorded record numbers of antisemitic incidents in its own reports.
Muslims were the second-most targeted religious group, victim to a total of 236 incidents, an increase from the 205 recorded in 2022. Black Americans, who comprise around 13% of the U.S. population, were subject to 3,027 hate crimes and were the only group targeted more often than Jews.
The FBI said 16,009 agencies around the country sent in hate crimes data, covering 95.2% of the U.S. population, although not all agencies submitted data for every month of the year. As in previous years, several large cities did not report any hate crime data, something Jewish organizations have long sought to address via legislation. For 2023, several large cities such as Orlando, Florida, and Newark, New Jersey, did not report any data.
Maya Berry, the Arab American Institute’s executive director, noted the spikes in anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish incidents and called for better hate crime reporting practices. “These numbers reflect the urgent need to address the full spectrum of hate facing our communities and ensure accurate data collection to guide effective policy responses,” she said.
A single incident could include multiple offenses, if, for example, an offender perpetrated both assault and intimidation at the same time. There were 2,002 total offenses against Jews, including 1,000 cases of vandalism, 700 of intimidation, 112 cases of assault and 62 of aggravated assault. There were seven cases of antisemitic arson and no antisemitic murders recorded by the FBI.
There were 2,069 Jewish victims, of whom 1,136 were adults and 128 were minors.
Jewish groups said the data was alarming but did not fully capture the threat to American Jews.
The reported antisemitic incidents have “taken a severe toll on so many American Jews’ way of life,” said Ted Deutch, the CEO of the American Jewish Committee. “It’s unacceptable that in America of all places there are nearly five antisemitic hate crimes on average per day.”
Different groups use differing standards and methods to quantify the level of antisemitism in the United States, and the AJC said the number of antisemitic incidents “is likely greater, as hate crimes are widely underreported across the country.” That assessment was echoed by the Secure Community Network, a Jewish security agency, which said it had recorded more than 5,400 threats and suspicious incidents in 2023 and said the FBI’s report did “not fully reflect the scope of the threat.” The ADL’s 2023 report tallied 8,873 antisemitic incidents.
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