What the FBI's hate crime numbers say about antisemitism

Quick answer: The FBI recorded 1,832 anti-Jewish hate crime incidents in 2023, up from 1,124 the year before, and roughly 1,900 in 2024, a new high. Jewish Americans are about 2 percent of the population. They were the target in about two-thirds of all religion-based incidents.

That's the headline. The details matter more, because this is a number people either inflate or wave away.

The official count

The FBI collects hate crime data from local and state police agencies and publishes it each year. The most recent full-year figures it has released cover 2024, and the numbers run a year or so behind the calendar.

For 2023, the Bureau counted 11,862 hate crime incidents of all kinds. That was only a slight rise over 2022, which came in around 11,600. The overall number barely moved.

The anti-Jewish number did. Incidents went from 1,124 in 2022 to 1,832 in 2023, an increase of about 63 percent. Of the roughly 2,700 religion-based incidents that year, anti-Jewish incidents made up about 68 percent. Anti-Muslim incidents were the next largest group, at 317.

The 2024 release, published in 2025, put overall hate crime at about 11,700 incidents, roughly flat again. Anti-Jewish incidents rose once more, to around 1,900. If you're quoting a figure, pull it from the FBI's Crime Data Explorer rather than from a screenshot. Totals get revised as agencies file late reports.

Do the math on the population share. Pew's 2020 survey put Jewish adults at about 2.4 percent of the country. A group that small shouldn't account for two-thirds of anything unless something is badly wrong.

What the count can't tell you

Treat these limits as part of the story.

Reporting is voluntary. Local agencies choose whether and how to send in hate crime data. The FBI also moved to a new reporting system in 2021, which temporarily thinned the data and makes older comparisons shaky. Year-over-year changes are more trustworthy than long-range charts.

Police have to call it a hate crime. An incident only counts if there's an underlying crime, such as vandalism, arson, assault or intimidation, and officers find evidence the offender was motivated by bias. Slurs shouted from a car with no crime attached don't show up. Neither does a campus incident that never reaches a police report.

Most hate crimes never get reported. The Justice Department's own victimization surveys have long found that a large share of hate crimes aren't reported to police. The official figure is a floor, not a ceiling.

Incidents and offenses aren't the same thing. One incident can involve several offenses and several victims. Check which one a headline is quoting.

The other counts

The Anti-Defamation League, a private advocacy group, runs its own annual audit. It logged 9,354 incidents in 2024, a record by its count and up about 5 percent from 8,873 in 2023. That's far higher than the FBI's number because the ADL includes harassment and other conduct that isn't a crime. It's useful as a measure of the climate, but it isn't an official statistic and shouldn't be mixed with the FBI's.

Both sets of numbers point the same way. The direction isn't in dispute. Only the size depends on what each source counts.

Behind the figures

The numbers have a face. In October 2018, a gunman killed eleven worshippers at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, the deadliest attack on Jews in American history. In May 2025, two Israeli embassy staffers, Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim, were shot and killed outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington after an event. A suspect was charged, including with federal hate crime offenses. Other cases are in the FBI's data, and plenty of smaller ones never made the news: a swastika on a garage door, a rock through a window, a kid cornered on the way home from school.

Commentary

This section is opinion.

Call it what it is. Antisemitism is among the oldest hatreds on earth, and it's rising in America. A number like 68 percent from a group of 2 percent isn't noise. It's an alarm.

It also doesn't come from one direction, and it's a mistake to pretend it does. It comes from the extreme right and from the extreme left. It comes from campuses where chanting about Israel slides into targeting Jewish students, and from online corners where old conspiracy theories get recycled for a new audience. The FBI's headline figures don't classify the offenders' ideology, so anyone claiming the data proves it's all one camp is selling something.

We hold that wrong is wrong. A man who spray-paints a synagogue should be arrested and prosecuted, whatever his politics, and a school that shrugs when Jewish kids are harassed should answer for it. We also stand with Israel and think the line between criticizing a government and hunting its people is real and worth defending. Most people who argue about Israel aren't haters. Some are, and they should be called out by name.

The ordinary man's role is simple. Show up. Stand beside your Jewish neighbors when something goes wrong. Report vandalism when you see it. Teach your kids that this hatred is a lie with a long record of ending in graves.

How to check the number yourself

You'll see this statistic quoted loosely. Before you repeat it:

• Find the year and the source. FBI, ADL and a university study mean three different things.
• Check whether it says "incidents," "offenses" or "victims."
• Note whether the figure is a crime count or includes non-criminal harassment.
• Compare like with like. Don't set an ADL total next to an FBI total.

The same discipline applies to any number thrown at you in a headline. We've written about what to check before you believe an economic headline, and the habits carry over. So does the argument in what doing your own research should actually mean: go to the primary source, read the footnotes, and don't let anyone's summary stand in for the data.

The FBI's tables are public and free. Read them before you argue about them.