Anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US are on the rise. Why isn’t there more being done to stop it?
- Ofek Kehila
- Jun 23
- 3 min read
Anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US are at a record high. According to The New York Times analysis of data from the F.B.I, Gallup, Pew Research Center and US Census Bureau, anti-Jewish hate crimes amounted in 2023 to 291 crimes per 1 million Jewish people, the highest rate among hate crimes committed against other groups in the US, such as LGBTQ people (111 per 1 million), Muslim people (79 per 1 million), and Asian people (17 per 1 million).
Between 2024-2025, the situation worsened: On October 27, 2024, an Orthodox Jewish man was shot in the back as he walked to a synagogue in Chicago; on April 13, 2025, Molotov cocktails were thrown into the residence of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro while he and his family slept inside; on June 1, 2025, in Boulder, Colorado, a man with a makeshift flamethrower attacked and wounded 12 demonstrators, most Jewish, attending a peaceful rally in support of the Israeli hostages in Gaza; on June 15, 2025, a brick reading “Free Palestine” shattered the storefront window of a Jewish-owned eatery in Brookline, Massachusetts. Unfortunately, this grim list goes on.
Types of antisemitism
Chen Malul, Head of Digital Content in Yad Vashem, the World Holocaust Remembrance Center, explains that even though antisemitism is not a new problem, the phenomenon has undergone several transformations over the past centuries and up to recent times. Antisemitism, defined as hostility or prejudice against Jewish people, was traditionally divided into two main kinds:
Religious antisemitism has been prevalent since early Christianity and is defined as hostility to Jews that stems from religious motives.
Racial antisemitism, which the Nazis greatly developed, is defined as hostility to Jews, stemming from ideologies of race.
“However, since 1948 and on, Jews have been not only persecuted for these reasons but also due to their connection to the state of Israel. This third kind is referred to as ‘new antisemitism,” Malul told the Mideast Journal.
How to stop antisemitism?
According to Malul, the different kinds of antisemitism, and especially the latest “new antisemitism,” require us to seek new ways to fight it constantly. Since new antisemitism relates Jewish people to Zionism, the state of Israel, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (even if they do not openly identify as zionists or Israelis, for that matter), it is no longer enough to fight anti-Jewish hatred via education on the Holocaust alone. In addition to informing themselves about the Holocaust, people in the US need to know more precisely about those issues: Zionism, Israel, and the conflict with the Palestinians and the Arab world.
“We need to talk more about the Middle East, including the various perspectives of the conflict, and focus on the facts. The more people in the US understand the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian situation, the better we will be able to fight antisemitism and the rising tide of anti-Jewish hate crimes,” he concludes. According to Malul and others, education is the key.
What is being done so far to stop antisemitism?
Several weeks ago, Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Antisemitism, Ambassador Deborah Lipstadt, stated in the AJC-CRIF Forum in Paris that the US government recognizes antisemitism and anti-Jewish hate crimes as a problem. Nevertheless, it seems that not enough is being done to solve it.
In 2019, President Donald Trump signed the Executive Order on Combating Anti-Semitism; in 2023, the Biden administration launched the U.S. National Strategy to Counter Antisemitism. However, while measures are taken to fight antisemitism on a bipartisan level, the problem only intensifies in the US, and attacks on Jewish people are bipartisan in nature as well, coming from both the far right and the progressive left. In her recent talk, Lipstadt said: “I talked about a spectrum of antisemitism from the right to the left. I no longer use that spectrum; I talk about a horseshoe, a horseshoe where the two extremes meet, the extreme right and the extreme left.”
Wrap up
While executive orders, national strategies, and educational programs may help fight antisemitism, the surge of anti-Jewish hate crimes in the US will continue to claim victims for the months and years to come. To bring about a true societal change in the context of antisemitism in the US, much more has to be done.
Ofek Kehila (Israel, 1987) is a scholar of Spanish Golden Age literature and Latin American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. His research bridges the gap between those traditions, highlighting their aesthetic, cultural, and historical dialogue. He holds a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2022) and was a postdoctoral fellow at Freie Universität Berlin (2023-2025).