One year later: Anti-Jewish and anti-Muslim hate incidents spike since Oct. 7 attacks
(This story was updated to add new information.)
Since Oct. 7 of last year, US advocacy groups have reported anti-Jewish, anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian incidents are on the rise. Across the country, people have endured antisemitic epithets as well as anti-Muslim rhetoric, in response to the ongoing Israel-Hamas war abroad.
The Anti-Defamation League, an advocacy group focused on combatting antisemitism, recorded more than 10,000 antisemitic incidents in the US, one year after Oct 7. The major spike in hate incidents in 2023 and 2024 is in part due to a change in the League's definition of "antisemitic incidents." The new methodology counts “rallies that feature ‘anti-Zionist chants and slogans,’ as an antisemitic incident, Paste BN previously reported.
At the same time, the Council on American-Islamic Relations reported that anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian complaints topped 8,000 in 2023, with nearly half of these complaints reported in the final three months of the year, as Israel carried out its war in Gaza. Within the first six months of 2024, nearly 5,000 complaints of discrimination were documented by the council.
The recent spike in hate crime incidents is part of a decade-long upward trend in the US, data from the Federal Bureau of Investigation shows. Hate crimes are currently at an all time high since the FBI began collecting data in 1991.
Here's how anti-Muslim and anti-Jewish incidents have grown in the past year:
Antisemitic hate crimes are on the rise in the US
Between October 7, 2023 and September 24, 2024, the Anti-Defamation League reported over 10,000 incidents of antisemitism, with nearly a third of them taking place during "anti-Israel rallies."
Since 2014, the annual number of antisemitic incidents has risen consistently, setting new records in 2019, 2020, 2021, and in 2022. Because of the change in ADL's methodology after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel, total incidents recorded prior to this event are not comparable with incidents recorded after Oct 7, 2023.
A spokesperson for ADL previously told Paste BN, "While it’s true that ADL has made adjustments to its criteria for assessing anti-Israel incidents, we periodically update our methodology.” The spokesperson added, “Those changes reflect the current state of antisemitism and the impact that some anti-Zionist activity is having on the American Jewish community.”
Preliminary data from the Anti-Defamation League shows that more than 2,000 of the anti-Jewish incidents recorded between Oct. 7, 2023 and Sept. 24, 2024 occurred at Jewish institutions such as synagogues and Jewish centers. Over half of all incidents at these institutions were bomb threats.
Jonathan Greenblatt, Anti-Defamation League CEO said in a statement that since the Oct. 7 attacks, "we’ve faced a shocking number of antisemitic threats and experienced calls for more violence against Israelis and Jews everywhere.”
The amount of threats, vandalism and assault inflicted against Jewish Americans is "unprecedented," the report stated.
Anti-Muslim hate crimes on the rise
More than 8,000 complaints were recorded in 2023 by the Council on American-Islamic Relations – the highest number recorded in CAIR's 30-year history.
In CAIR's 2023 report, the organization wrote the "primary force behind this wave of heightened Islamophobia was the escalation of violence in Israel and Palestine in October 2023." There were 8,061 complaints in 2023, shattering the previous high of just over 6,700 in 2021.
Complaints included immigration and asylum cases, employment discrimination, education discrimination and hate crimes and incidents.
The Council documented 4,951 incoming complaints of anti-Muslim and anti-Palestinian discrimination between January and June 2024. This is a 69% increase over the same period in 2023.
Zanah Ghalawanji, CAIR's staff attorney, previously told Paste BN that Muslims were painted in a negative light regarding the war, which also fueled hate crimes.
"A lot of people in the Muslim community reported that the time period felt a lot worse to them than 9/11," she said.
Hate crime incidents have been on the rise since 2014
Total hate crimes peaked in 2023, the largest total since data collection began in 1991, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigations.
Preliminary data from the Center for the Study of Hate and Extremism at California State University found that hate crimes reported to police in the nation's 10 largest cities rose again in 2023.
New York and Los Angeles saw some of the largest increases in anti-Jewish hate crimes, rising 12.6% and 48% respectively, while Los Angeles and Chicago saw 40% and 300% increases in anti-Muslim hate crimes, according to the study.
Experts point out that hate crime data is notoriously flawed and the FBI's data is likely an undercount. It's not mandatory for all of the country's more than 18,000 law enforcement agencies to submit data on hate crimes and in 2022, less than 80% of agencies submitted data to the FBI.
Contributing: Krystal Nurse, Rachel Barber, Will Carless and N'dea Yancey-Bragg, Paste BN