Police control the scene after a car repeatedly slammed into Chabad World Headquarters in Crown Heights section of Brooklyn. The driver was taken into custody. Photo: ZUMA Press Wire via Reuters Connect

New disturbing data released by the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) underscored the ongoing reality of rising antisemitic discrimination and violence across the US, as the bureau revealed that nearly two-thirds of all religion-based hate crimes nationwide in 2025 targeted American Jews.

A striking 63% of religious-based hate crimes and 14 percent of total hate crimes in the US last year were perpetrated against Jews, the FBI’s annual Hate Crime Statistics report said, recording 1,528 such incidents. Jews comprise just 2% of the total US population.

The next most targeted religious group, Muslims, were the victims of 205 hate crime incidents, meaning Jews were attacked seven times more often.

Jews remained disproportionately targeted even as overall reported hate crime incidents across the country decreased from 11,679 in 2024 to 10,881 in 2025. Even though anti-Jewish incidents nationwide decreased last year from a total of 1,938 in 2024, the latest data marked the third-highest year on record of antisemitic hate crimes.

So rampant was anti-Jewish hatred, the FBI data showed, that the antisemitic hate crime total reached just over 50 percent of the total perpetrated against the Black community, which is over six times larger than the Jewish community.

According to many observers, these latest figures continued a trend that took hold following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel: a historic surge in antisemitism around the world, including in the US.

“Apparently, being 2% of the US population is enough to earn 63% of the hate. The FBI calls these shocking figures a hate-crime statistic; Jewish Americans, however, understand it’s the proof of a horrific crisis that is threatening the community’s ability to conduct its affairs, pursue its interests, and practice its religion in safety and security,” Nitsana Darshan-Leitner, president of Shurat HaDin, an advocacy group which fights antisemitic incitement, told The Algemeiner on Tuesday.

Darshan-Leitner highlighted the role of the progressive far left, especially figures such as New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, in fostering antisemitism through animus toward Israel and Zionism.

“The radicalized left seems determined to continue targeting Israel and Zionism with hate speech, incitement on social media, and acts of extremist violence,” she said. “Mamdani and other socialist leaders are leading this dangerous chorus. They insist their rhetoric has nothing to do with antisemitism — just as the fire insists it has nothing to do with the smoke.”

Darshan-Leitner added, “History teaches us that when hatred of the Jewish state becomes fashionable, hatred of Jews is never far behind. Law enforcement and elected officials in America need to be doing more than just tabulating statistics: they need real forceful action to restore security.”

US lawmakers also lamented the latest FBI statistics as indicative of a major problem of rising antisemitism.

“Year after year, we’ve seen alarming rates of antisemitic harassment and violence in this country. While the latest FBI Hate Crimes report shows a slight decrease in 2025 when compared to the previous year, anti-Jewish hate crimes continue to be higher than they were before the Oct. 7, 2023, terrorist attack on Israel,” Sens. Jacky Rosen (D-NV) and James Lankford (R-OK) said in a statement. “This report shows the dark reality for Jewish Americans … We’re faced with nothing less than a crisis, and we need collective action.”

Rosen and Lankford are co-founders and co-chairs of the Senate Bipartisan Task Force on Combating Antisemitism.

The year 2025 notably saw the shocking murders of Jews in antisemitic attacks in the US for the first time since 2019, as previously reported by The Algemeiner. Two Israeli embassy staffers — a young couple set be engaged — were shot dead in Washington, DC in May, and weeks later a firebombing in Colorado claimed the life of an octogenarian. In both crimes, the alleged killers cited anti-Zionism as their motivating ideology.

That year, also saw an array of other criminal and social offenses which The Algemeiner covered. These included, among many others, a public-school principal inveighing against “Jew money,” attempted arson at the Hillel International chapter in San Francisco, California, and the movement of some conservative students into the far-right ecosystem of antisemitism.

Antisemitic incidents in the US are trending downward, according to a report released earlier this year by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The organization found that such incidents in the US decreased overall in 2025, but violent attacks targeting American Jews remained at alarmingly high levels.

Specifically, the ADL tallied 6,274 incidents of antisemitic assault, harassment, and vandalism in 2025, an average of 17 such outrages per day. But antisemitic vandalism was down 21 percent last year. So too was antisemitic harassment, which decreased 39 percent. However, both categories still combined for a total 6,071 incidents, and perpetrators increased their use of “deadly” weapons by nearly 40 percent.

The ADL recorded its steepest decline on campuses, where Jewish university students have reported alarming levels of anti-Jewish bias often disguised as or justified by anti-Israel animus. Such antisemitic incidents fell 66 percent to 583 incidents in 2025, down from 1,694 the previous year. The plunge coincided with the second term of US President Donald Trump, whose administration has launched dozens of federal investigations into campus antisemitism and impounded taxpayer funding from schools found to have failed to address the issue.

“Behind every one of these numbers is a person who was targeted simply for being Jewish, whether through vandalism, intimidation, or violence. In 2025, that hate turned deadly, not just here at home, but around the world. 2025 was the deadliest year for antisemitic attacks in the Jewish diaspora in more than three decades, with 20 people murdered globally simply for being Jewish,” ADL CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a statement on the latest FBI data. “We cannot allow a modest yet positive decline in the topline domestic numbers to obscure the reality that antisemitism remains one of the most persistent and dangerous forms of hate in this country and beyond.”

Rising antisemitism across the US has shifted how American Jews relate to their country and themselves, as 57 percent of those surveyed by the Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) in a survey released in July said they are hiding indicators of their identity to avoid being the target of a hate crime or other discriminatory acts.

According to the survey, 38 percent of Jews hide items that would give away their identity, 32 percent abstain from sharing social media content that would do so, and 23 percent have stopped attending Jewish worship services and cultural events, fearing they may come under attack. CAM went on to note that American Jews are looking to lawmakers for help and believe that adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism would strengthen the legal and justice system’s protection of Jews as a historic minority and protected group that has long suffered discrimination.

Seventy-one percent of survey respondents said they support the move, with “just 1 percent” saying they strongly oppose it.

Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.