Jews were the victims of most religion-based hate crimes in 2024 according to a recently released FBI report (https://cde.ucr.cjis.gov/LATEST/webapp/#). This distressing statistic, reported year after year, grabs attention but it is misleading. It derives from the FBI’s hate crimes reporting guidelines which stipulate the sole motivation for hate crimes against Jews is religious bias. According to these guidelines, the murderers of Sarah Milgrom and Yaron Lischinsky, shot to death in May at the Jewish Museum in Washington D.C., and Karen Diamond, firebombed fatally the next month at a gathering for the hostages in Boulder, were motivated by hatred of Judaism. Yet the killers yelled “Free Palestine” during or after the attacks and nothing about the religious beliefs of the victims. Yaron wasn’t even Jewish. The FBI’s reporting guidelines should better reflect why assailants commit hate crimes against Jews.

The federal 1990 Hate Crime Statistics Act led the FBI to add hate crimes to its Uniform Crime Reporting Program. Under this program, local law enforcement agencies submit crime data to the Bureau based on its guidelines. Local agencies are directed to put hate crimes into one of six bias categories that are consistent with the Act: race/ethnicity/ancestry; religion; sexual orientation; disability; gender; and gender identity.

Hate crimes targeting Jews belong in the religious bias category according to the FBI’s guidelines (https://le.fbi.gov/file-repository/hate-crime-data-collection-guidelines-and-training-manual.pdf/view). But were black-hatted Haredim on the streets of Brooklyn sucker-punched because they followed too many of the 613 mitzvot........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)