Mere hours after Hamas’s heinous Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel that resulted in approximately 1,200 dead and 250 taken hostage, the Jewish community worldwide became the target of an onslaught of hatred and violence. Over the last year, antisemitic prejudice in the United States has reached a horrifying fever pitch.

Since Oct. 7, Jewish Americans have witnessed arson at their houses of worship and have been assaulted while practicing their faith. Jews have also faced attacks while going about their daily lives. A Jewish teenager was punched in the head in March in Brooklyn, New York, while waiting for a bus. In August, a Jewish man in Brooklyn was stabbed on the street as his attacker yelled, “Free Palestine.” Two Orthodox Jewish teenagers, ages 11 and 13, were beaten and “stomped on” by an unknown attacker while playing outside their Bedford-Stuyvesant, New York, home in May. Also in May, a driver screamed, “I’m going to kill all the Jews,” while careening over the curb and onto a lawn toward a rabbi and students at a Jewish school in Brooklyn.

In addition to these and numerous other acts of violence, the Jewish community has fielded chilling threats, harassment, and intimidation, with multiple Jewish homes and businesses becoming targets of vandalism. Around the country, hate has been normalized through anti-Israel protests in cities and at universities. At a pro-Palestinian rally in Thousand Oaks, California, in November, Jewish counterprotester Paul Kessler died after being “bludgeoned” with a headphone while waving an Israeli flag.

While it is impossible to quantify the inexorable growth of hate since Oct. 7 fully, data from the federal entities supporting the Jewish community’s fight for tolerance offer chilling confirmation not only of escalating prejudice but of the incredible resources that the U.S. government has devoted to preserving Jewish safety. Leaders from the Anti-Defamation League and the Orthodox Union also spoke to the Washington Examiner with immense emotion about the strain the past year has put on their resources and sense of security. Finally, the family of an American hostage taken by Hamas provided insight into the pain of knowing that their loved one continues to be held by a lawless terrorist organization even as the world seems indifferent to their suffering.

Hate crimes data

The Anti-Defamation League tracks incidents of hatred and intolerance affecting all people and releases a yearly tally of antisemitic incidents each spring. Oren Segal, vice president of the ADL’s Center on Extremism, told the Washington Examiner that the ADL chose to release preliminary figures of incidents tracked over the past year in October, explaining they show “record highs … that we have never seen before.”

Between Oct. 7, 2023, and Sept. 24, 2024, the ADL tracked more than 10,000 incidents of antisemitism, the “highest number of incidents ever recorded in any single year period since ADL started tracking in 1979,” according to a press release. This is a 200% increase on the 3,325 incidents reported over the same period last year.

The incidents included 8,015 cases of verbal or written harassment, 1,840 cases of vandalism, and 150 physical assaults. Of the more than 2,000 incidents that took place at Jewish synagogues or centers, over half were bomb threats. Only 81 bomb threats had been recorded over the same period the previous year. About 1,200 incidents occurred on college campuses, up from about 200 incidents reported at colleges the previous year. More than 3,000 incidents occurred at anti-Israel rallies.

The ADL noted that it “expects these preliminary figures to increase” before the final report on incidents in 2024 is released in spring 2025.

Segal explained that “the sheer volume of incidents” is “one of the main reasons the Jewish community continues to feel very vulnerable post-Oct. 7.” While protesters cheer terrorist organizations from inside the U.S., Americans are “ascribing blame on” Jewish officials, restaurants, institutions, and schools, which Segal said have been targeted “because of either their support for Israel or perceived support for Israel.”

The ADL itself has been affected by the influx of hate. “It’s a question of where we have to put our resources,” Segal explained. Staffers are working extended hours, weekends, and holidays to support regional ADL offices responding to communities in turmoil. “We take a lot of care to make sure people have a healthy work-life balance, but I’d be lying if this past year we were as successful as we need to be,” Segal said. “There’s no moment of rest. … We’ve been in response mode and crisis mode for a long time. It does take a toll.”

The ADL’s tabulations are echoed in FBI hate crime data that also demonstrate spiking antisemitic crimes after Oct. 7.

In 2022, the FBI counted a total of 1,257 antisemitic hate crimes. This comprised about 10% of 12,186 total hate crimes recorded during the year, though the Jewish community makes up about 2.4% of the U.S. population. During 2023, the FBI counted 1,951 antisemitic hate crimes, an increase of 55% over the prior year. In 2023, antisemitic hate crimes made up 15% of 12,355 reported hate crimes.

The rise in incidents becomes even more concerning when examined against the timeline of Hamas’s attack. In 2023, 980 antisemitic hate crimes occurred between January and September, for an average of 3.55 incidents per day. From October to December, the FBI counted 971 antisemitic hate crimes, occurring at a rate of 10.55 per day. This was a nearly 200% increase over the 318 incidents, 3.45 incidents per day, logged between October and December 2022.

Campus antisemitism

The Department of Education’s Office of Civil Rights is charged with investigating violations of Title VI, which prohibits discrimination on the basis of national origin, color, or race in programs or activities that receive federal funds. When K-12 schools or universities fail to prevent discrimination, people can send complaints to the OCR. After the OCR investigates claims for evidence of Title VI violations or failure to address a hostile learning environment, the Department of Education can withhold federal funds or negotiate a resolution with the offending institution that prescribes steps for creating a safe learning environment for all students.

An Education Department spokesperson told the Washington Examiner that between October 2022 and September 2023, the OCR received 59 complaints of “discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry,” which includes allegations of antisemitism and Islamophobia. From October 2023 to Sept. 25, 2024, the “OCR received 493 complaints alleging discrimination on the basis of shared ancestry.” This represents an increase of more than 700%.

The spokesperson pointed out several of its most recent complaint resolutions, which paint a vivid picture of the hatred that Jewish students face in academic environments as well as institutional reticence to address this hate in a substantive manner.

A recent July resolution for an unnamed school in the Carmel Unified School District in California shows the impact of prejudice in the K-12 environment. The federal investigation found that there were 15 instances of swastika graffiti or vandalism in the school, which “created a hostile environment” between 2021 and 2024. This included nine swastikas scrawled on bathrooms, desks, rulers, and a student’s skin in the 2021-22 school year and additional reports in the 2023-24 school year, which included a student stating they wanted “to kill all Jews and burn them in their homes.”

In August, the OCR resolved an arson complaint in which the target was a Jewish student at Drexel University. Though finding the incident was not motivated by antisemitism, its investigation of the university turned up “growing evidence of a hostile environment for over 18 months,” including graffiti scrawled in October 2023 with a swastika and the words “F*** the Jews,” mezuzahs (Jewish prayer scrolls) removed from dormitory doors in November, “repeated social media threats including ‘F*** you and f*** Israel,’” and finally “a group of masked individuals vandalizing the university’s Center for Jewish Life in April 2024.” Investigators concluded that Drexel “did not consider whether broader and more responsive action was needed for the university community” in its response.

In a September 2024 resolution of complaints from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, OCR investigated 135 allegations of anti-Jewish discrimination and four allegations of Islamophobia. Many reported incidents involved physical harm, including one allegation that a student ripped a chain off of a Jewish student and told the student he or she wished his or her “ancestors finished the job.” OCR found that the university “lacked coordination and inconsistently applied university policies and procedures,” possibly creating gaps in its “ability to address a hostile environment.”

A July resolution of complaints of 75 reports of antisemitic, anti-Palestinian, and anti-Muslim harassment at Brown University between October 2023 and late March 2024 found the university “appears to have taken no or little action in response other than to acknowledge receipt … list support resources, and request to meet with the complainant” despite reports alleging “serious harm.”

A June resolution of 75 reports of discrimination at the University of Michigan “found no evidence that the university complied with its Title VI requirements to assess whether incidents individually or cumulatively created a hostile environment.”

There are more than 100 open OCR complaints countrywide: 42 in K-12 schools and 72 in higher education environments. Despite the OCR’s admirable work, its resolutions have not mitigated hate on campus.

At the University of Michigan specifically, Michigan Attorney General Dana Nessel announced criminal charges against 11 people on Sept. 12 for their alleged roles in endangering students during encampment protests at the University of Michigan in the spring of 2024. Four people were charged with misdemeanors, but seven received felony charges because they had “physically placed their hands or bodies against police who were conducting their duty to clear the hazardous encampment, or physically obstructed an arrest.”

In response to Nessel’s attempt to address criminality on campus, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI) said that “because the issue was Palestine, [Nessel] was going to treat it differently, and that alone speaks volumes about possible biases within the agency she runs.”

Nessel, who is Jewish, responded, “Rashida should not use my religion to imply I cannot perform my job fairly. … It’s antisemitic and wrong.”

On Sept. 13, Tlaib told reporters that she was not commenting on Nessel’s faith but was concerned about “the unjust and heavy-handed response to peaceful civil disobedience.”

Two days later, there was nothing remotely peaceful for the 19-year-old University of Michigan student who was assaulted by a group of men after they asked if he was Jewish and he responded in the affirmative. Second and third attacks on Jewish students at the university were recorded in late September but have not been described in detail.

Similar reports emerged from the University of Pittsburgh, where a Jewish student was assaulted on Sept. 27 by a roving gang of people who shouted antisemitic slurs during their attack. This followed on the heels of an assault on two Jewish students by a single person reportedly wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh in August. There have been no publicized OCR investigations of shared ancestry complaints at the University of Pittsburgh.

Incidents in Pittsburgh and Ann Arbor, and the resumption of campus protests, portend another school year of antisemitic violence and intimidation that are detrimental to Jewish students.

From practicing values to a posture of self-defense

As the executive director of nonprofit Orthodox Union, Rabbi Moshe Hauer nurtures a vast network of youth groups, synagogues, and religious study programs that support the Jewish community around the country. Hauer told the Washington Examiner that from this vantage point, he has witnessed how the last year “has been enormously difficult” for the Jewish community, which “has been under attack, physical as well as rhetorical.”

“Not long ago, we were very confident about our safety and security as Jews in America,” Hauer explained. But with escalating threats, Jewish institutions are now “investing enormous amounts of money, of energy, of resources in simply making sure that our facilities are safe,” which “moves us away from … what a faith community would want to do, which is to build positive experience, to build connection to family and to community and to God and to the values of charity, justice, and kindness, which are front and center of what we are about.”

“We didn’t build our organization as a defense organization. We didn’t build our community as a fortress. We built it to be able to grow engagement in our faith and the values that sit at the bedrock of the American values shared by all people of faith,” Hauer said. But “you can’t build when you’re too busy defending yourself.”

According to Hauer, the manipulations of fact stemming from the Israel-Gaza conflict are a “slanderous smear campaign” that is “casting the victim as the aggressor and using terms like ‘genocidal’ against a nation that includes Arabs as heads of surgery in its major hospitals, members of its Supreme Court and of its government … and sees no fault in the neighbor’s enemies who loudly and clearly declare their intent and act upon their desire to kill.”

But some antisemitism is stoked at home. Hauer fears that Jewish Americans are being set up to bear blame for the outcome of presidential elections.

Hauer references former President Donald Trump’s “very dangerous, reductionist” comments about Jewish voters. The latest in a spate of related generalizations, Trump told crowds on Sept. 19 that “the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with” his failure to secure the presidency.

Hauer fears that “when people are angry and frustrated after [the election,] as unfortunately history has shown happens, [Jewish Americans] will be scapegoated. We are really worried in the tinderbox that is this country right now.”

Hostage families

As the Jewish community inside the U.S. struggles to find safety and solace amid rising hate, it must also grapple with the knowledge that 97 hostages are still believed to be held in tunnels far below Gaza. Among them are seven American citizens, three of whom are presumed dead.

Segal noted that the lack of attention to the plight of Hamas’s hostages is a “denial of Jewish suffering.”

Hauer described that suffering, calling it an “incredible weight” that comes from knowing that “absolutely innocent people [were] snatched from their homes, people of all ages: babies and elderly citizens, Holocaust survivors,” and “have been held for approaching a year in darkness in airless tunnels, subject to hunger and to a lack of medicine and to abuse.” Hauer, visibly distressed by their suffering, urged “any person of conscience to cry out from the depths of their heart and from the rooftops to say, ‘This must stop!’”

The families of hostages are experiencing this horror acutely. Orna and Ronen Neutra are the parents of 22-year-old Omer Neutra, an Israel Defense Forces tank commander who was raised on Long Island and was taken hostage after Hamas fighters disabled his tank on Oct. 7. Ronen and Orna Neutra told the Washington Examiner that “the last year fighting for Omer’s release has been a journey filled with impossible emotions — waves of hope followed by moments of profound despair. It has felt like one long day, a blur of rallies, events, interviews, travel, and meetings.”

Orna and Ronen Neutra explained they have “had to balance optimism with the utter helplessness of something so much larger than [they are],” citing the feeling that “shifting priorities” within the U.S. and Israel have not made “release of the hostages … the priority for anyone but the hostage families.”

“What sustains us,” they said, “is the belief that Omer is alive and needs to be saved and our hope that we will be reunited once again with him. We must continue to shout for Omer’s freedom because he does not have a voice. We will not let his story, or that of the other 100 hostages, fade into the background.”

The conflict and hate continue

The new antisemitism incited by Oct. 7 is still coupled with the perennial threats posed by white supremacists and radical Islamists. At the beginning of September, a Pakistani man who had allied himself with the Islamic State was arrested while driving from Canada to New York City with a plan to source “AR-style rifles, ammunition, hunting knives, and other materials” for a detrimental attack on a Jewish Chabad in Brooklyn. He had planned the attack for Oct. 7 or Oct. 11, the Jewish High Holiday of Yom Kippur. In July, a white supremacist was indicted amid a plan to dress as Santa and pass out ricin-laced candy to Jewish children in Brooklyn.

Though these would-be attacks were stopped in their tracks, hatred itself continues apace. With the rising tenor of the conflict in Israel, Gaza, and Lebanon and the resumption of campus protests that carry the same venomous prejudice that garnered headlines during the prior school year, antisemitism appears to be headed for further escalation. Unfortunately, few leaders are willing to act as role models of tolerance as the world’s oldest hatred, cloaked in its latest mutation, spreads across the country.

Moving forward from such devastation may seem an impossibility, but Segal and Hauer retain hope, grown from heartening interactions with allies who Hauer says “are as horrified as we are.” Both Hauer and Segal said the Jewish community needs additional support from the populace to counteract the hatred fomented by Hamas and its supporters.

Hauer wants to see people band together in tangible support of the Jewish community through movements and rallies against the anti-Israel “celebrations of violence.” He explained that “it’s not enough for [people] to sit and be sad. They need to speak. They need to say, ‘This is not acceptable.’” Instead of Jewish Americans responding to calls of “murder” from anti-Israel groups by “standing there waving an Israeli flag,” Hauer said that “it should be every American … coming out with an American flag and saying, ‘Don’t do this here. Don’t bring this hate here.’”

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Segal emphasized the power of speaking out but urged people not to let confronting prejudice become “a political football” used simply to bludgeon their political opponents: “What’s actually important, even in your own family and community, is to call it out in the places that you exist, not just on the other side. Clean your own house because not only is that important for people to hear, but they might take it more seriously when they hear it from their peers as opposed to their perceived enemies.”

The staggering increase in antisemitism over the past year did not occur in a vacuum. Anti-Jewish hatred has been on the rise inside the U.S. for years. Amid this latest, horrifying spike in anti-Jewish hate, action is required. All Americans have a part in helping to alleviate Jewish suffering. Where we stand at this crucial time will determine whether our country will normalize violence against its own people or remain the land our forefathers imagined, where all are free to pursue their faith and practice their beliefs without fear.

Beth Bailey (@BWBailey85) is a freelance contributor to Fox News and the co-host of The Afghanistan Project, which takes a deep dive into the tragedy wrought in the wake of the U.S. withdrawal from Afghanistan.