Nearly two-thirds of 2025 religious hate crimes in U.S. were antisemitic, FBI data finds

By Marc Rod

Originally published by JewishInsider

Jewish Council for Public Affairs CEO Amy Spitalnick said, “Once again, the FBI’s data confirms what Jewish communities across this country already feel: the rising tide of hate means that we remain the most-targeted religious community in America,” noting that Jews constitute just 2% of the population but two-thirds of religious-based hate crimes.

Spitalnick also emphasized rising hate against other groups, arguing that “Jewish safety and the safety of our neighbors are inextricably linked — which is why we will never accept a strategy that protects one community by demonizing or ignoring another.”

She said that the slight decline in overall hate crimes is “welcome” but does not constitute safety and argued that a whole-of-government and whole-of-society approach to fighting hate remains necessary. She also emphasized that around 5% of the U.S. population was not covered by the data and that some local law enforcement agencies reported no hate crimes in areas where hate crimes are known to have occurred.

In 2025, 85.9% of all law enforcement agencies in the country submitted hate crimes data to the FBI — an optional program — covering 95.3% of the U.S. population. In some past years, reporting had been significantly hampered by non-participation by local law enforcement agencies, leading to what advocates said was an under-counting of hate crimes.

“The deeper problem is that we keep treating this crisis as a security problem to be managed rather than building resiliency to hate and extremism in the first place,” Spitalnick said, calling increased security funding necessary but “not a remedy” to hate.

“This new data tells us two things,” Spitalnick said. “Hate crimes remain far too high, and our national response is failing. We need the federal government to return its focus to protecting communities and building an inclusive, pluralistic democracy that is more resistant to hate in the first place.”