Anti-Semitic Crimes Drop by 30% in Decade

By JTA December 10, 2012

The number of “anti-Jewish” hate crimes has declined by 30% since 2000, a new FBI report revealed.

Crimes listed “anti-Jewish” as the motivation also fell, to 771 reported last year from the 1,109 in 2000.

There were 6,222 hate crimes reported during 2011, according to the report released Monday. The year 2000 showed slightly more than 8,000 hate crimes.

The 2011 figure was a 6 percent decrease from 2010 and the least number of such crimes reported since 1994.

The ADL in a release welcomed the report, calling it the “single most important snapshot” of violent bigotry in the country.

“Yet, 6,222 reported hate crimes – about one every 90 minutes of every day – is far too many,” the ADL statement said. “The increase in the number of reported hate crimes directed against gays and lesbians, now the second most frequent category of crime, is especially disturbing.”

The ADL termed as “troubling” that “Jews and Jewish institutions continued to be principle targets, accounting for 63 percent of all religion-based hate crimes in 2011 – showing, once again, that anti-Semitism is still a serious and deeply entrenched problem in America.”

The FBI report does not account for unreported hate crimes, the ADL noted, and at least 79 cities with populations greater than 100,000 either did not participate or reported zero hate crimes.

“Law enforcement agencies must demonstrate that they are ready and willing to respond to hate violence,” the ADL said.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

This year, we have stood together in strength and sorrow. Our Forward team has worked around the clock to help you find clarity amid the chaos.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism.

— Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO