There were 6 hate crimes against Jews in 2020, 8 in 2021, 39 in 2022, 50 in 2023 and 55 in 2024.
But the year is only half over.
In 2023, there were a total of 81 hate crimes attacking religion, and 61% of them were anti-Jewish. This year, there have been 62 hate crimes against religions so far, and 89% of those have been anti-Jewish.
By contrast, there have been 4 anti-Muslim hate crimes so far this year in Chicago.
There are roughly the same number of Jews and Muslims in Chicago (between 300,000 and 400,000.)
How long will it take for local and national leaders to understand that anti-Jewish bigotry is fundamentally different from all other types, and requires different methods to fight them?
The assassination attempt on Trump on Saturday shows that some people take demonization rhetoric seriously enough to kill on behalf of their twisted idas of morality. . If Trump is evil personified, then killing him makes as much sense as assassinating Hitler in 1938. But the same deranged hate rhetoric is being hurled against Jews every day - after all, the majority of Jews are accused of supporting genocide, the worst possible crime. It is not out of the question that a similarly deranged person with a gun will believe that shooting up a synagogue or a random Jew in the street is a righteous, necessary act for the good of mankind.
This has already happened many times to Jews in the US. Usually the shooters are either Muslim or far Right, but the Right feeds on the anti-Israel propaganda of the Left - the neo-Nazi Daily Stormer has graphics from The Guardian and quotes Haaretz.
