WASHINGTON — Federal and local officials and members of law enforcement are concerned about a spike in hate crimes across the United States in the past year.
From violent attacks to verbal harassment, it’s a growing problem.
On Tuesday, members of U.S. Congress heard testimony about ongoing threats from hate crimes, including from the Jewish and the Arab-American communities about the increase in threats after Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023.
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Lawmakers spent their time at a hearing examining the disturbing trend, going from the mass shooting which targeted the Black community at a Buffalo, N.Y. grocery store to the massacre at a Pittsburgh synagogue and the murder of a six-year-old boy in Illinois after the Israel-Hamas war began in October.
The rise in hate crimes is spiking now, but has been on the rise for the past decade in communities all over the U.S.
In particular, the past year has seen a spike of threats and hate crimes against Jewish Americans and Arab Americans since the Oct. 7 attack by Hamas.
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“We have seen an increase in attacks on Jewish Americans, Palestinian Americans, Arab-Americans, Muslim-Americans,” Illinois Sen. Dick Durbin said at the Senate Judiciary meeting.
Testifying before members of Congress, Maya Berry from the Arab American Institute said “Every single year since the 2016 presidential election, the trajectory has been a dangerous increase of hate crimes in our country.”
Christopher Wray, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, has warned about a historic increase in antisemitism in the U.S., a concern shared by lawmakers.
“Two point four percent of Americans are Jewish. Sixty percent of all religious based hate crimes have been directed against the Jewish people. There’s something going on that needs to be addressed,” South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham said at the hearing.
Witnesses testifying before Congress about the issue warned about the danger to Jewish students on college campuses.
Rabbi Mark Goldfeder from the National Jewish Advocacy Center said Jewish students had been “hiding from mobs in libraries, avoiding dining halls because of death threats and removing Nazi symbols from Chabad houses.”
Other experts have urged Congress to use its oversight power to make sure current laws are being enforced to protect Americans against hate crimes, cautioning that we not only need more data on the frequency of hate crimes, but also on their economic cost.
“The response ha to be on that acknowledges all targeted communities [which] are being impacted,” Berry said.
The latest hate crime statistics from the FBI have not yet been released, but lawmakers and experts expect them to reflect another significant yearly increase.
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