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Articles
Seventy percent of religious hate crimes directed against
Jews
By Nathan Guttman
Haaretz
November 25, 2004 Kislev 12, 5765
FBI report reveals no reduction in anti-Jewish hate crimes in 2003.
WASHINGTON - The good news is that anti-Semitism in the United States
is not on the rise. The bad news is that it is not waning. This week,
the American Justice Department released the Federal Bureau of Investigations'
annual Hate Crimes Statistics for 2003, which summarizes reports from
throughout the U.S. on crimes against individuals based on their racial,
ethnic or religious affiliation, sexual orientation or nationality. The
report reinforces the findings of other studies on crimes against Jews
in the U.S., which indicate a steady level of anti-Semitic violence, unaffected
by external events and unchanged by the establishment's efforts to reduce
it.
In 2003, some 923 racially motivated crimes against Jews were reported,
almost the same number as in the previous year (931). This is not an insignificant
number. Crimes against Jews and Jewish institutions account for over 12
percent of hate crimes in the U.S., and 7 of every 10 crimes motivated
by anti-religious sentiments are committed against Jews.
What kind of offenses are behind these figures? Last year there were
13 reported cases of aggravated assault, 34 of simple assault and 274
cases of intimidation and threats. The highest number of anti-Semitic
incidents involved vandalism against Jewish property - 638 recorded cases.
The documented cases include the torching of a Holocaust museum in Indiana,
an arson attempt against a synagogue in Pennsylvania and the scrawling
of swastikas and curses on the walls of a synagogue in Arizona. Officials
involved in this field note that in most of the cases, the perpetrators
were not known members of racist movements and had no history of such
activities.
The harassment of members of other religions in the U.S. is much less
than that of Jews. After the September 11, 2001 terror attacks, there
was a sharp rise in assaults on Arabs, non-Arab Muslims and even Sikhs,
who were mistakenly considered Muslims. The number of such incidents skyrocketed
in the last quarter of 2001, when arson, intimidation and aggravated assault
were joined by some cases of murder. The American federal government led
an intensive campaign that included an information drive and punishment
of the perpetrators of hate crimes. Within a few months, the hate crime
rate against Muslims began to decline. In 2003, only 149 anti-Muslim incidents
were recorded in the U.S., similar to the number in the years preceding
the September 11 attacks.
The efficient handling of the wave of anti-Muslim violence in the U.S.
following the terror attacks and the fact that assaults against Muslims
returned to their previous level could serve as an example of the difference
between violent anti-Semitism in the U.S. and other hate phenomena. The
steady rate of hate crimes against Jews attests to the static and constant
level of violent hatred of Jews in American society, a level that is unaffected
by external events.
The Anti-Defamation League is conducting a study similar to the FBI's
study of hate crimes, but it focuses only on anti-Semitism and counts
incidents that are not necessarily included in the legal definition of
crime: insults, slanderous letters and the like. The ADL's annual audit
of anti-Semitic incidents documented 1,557 such incidents in 2003, just
two fewer than in 2002.
Sources involved in mapping hate crimes in the U.S. add an important
reservation to the debate on the question of anti-Semitism's place on
the American hate map. These sources say that although it is true that
hate crimes against Jews hold a central position in the statistics, it
is important to remember that the Jewish community is one of the most
active and one of the most aware of the legal options for handling crimes
against its members. While American Jews usually file a police report
for every anti-Semitic incident and protest against any harm to Jews,
other communities are still afraid to complain.
Illegal immigrants, for example, are afraid to turn to law enforcement
authorities, even when they are assaulted for their racial background,
and homosexuals who have not "come out of the closet" do not
complain of hate crimes against them for fear that the complaint will
lead to exposure in which they are not interested.
The pattern of American anti-Semitism is fundamentally different from
that of its European counterpart. While in Europe, there has been a marked
increase in anti-Semitism stemming from anti-Zionist and anti-Israel sentiments,
such a trend is much less prominent in the U.S. Even though there was
a surge of anti-Semitic incidents on university campuses about two years
ago, most of which were linked to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict (in
almost all of these cases, there was no criminal activity), in 2003 there
was a significant decline in campus incidents, and this trend is expected
to continue in 2004.
Although the figures for this year will be added up only at the end of
December, no significant changes in anti-Semitic activity are anticipated
in the U.S. This year, the main event in the life of the Jewish community
was the screening of Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ."
This raised fears of increased anti-Semitic sentiments among Christian
viewers, but it apparently had no real effect, at least not immediately.
Surveys conducted a few weeks after the screening of the film began did
not find any essential changes in the American public's positions toward
the Jews' responsibility for Jesus' death.
Unreported crimes
One of the main problems raised by the FBI report is that not all law
enforcement authorities take the trouble to report hate crimes that happen
in their jurisdiction. There are some 17,000 police and law enforcement
departments in the U.S. - police in the big cities, sheriff's offices
in outlying areas and other law enforcement agencies. Still, only about
12,000 of these participated in the preparation of the report. 5,000 police
departments throughout the U.S. did not fill out the questionnaire that
is used to gather information on hate crimes. Though many of these 5,000
were particularly small police departments in regions where hate crimes
are not common, even big cities such as Detroit and Indianapolis were
missing from the study.
"The problem is not just the fact that they are not reporting,"
says Michael Lieberman, the ADL's Washington counsel. "It is the
fact that not reporting shows a lack of a serious approach to hate crimes."
For the sake of comparison, other annual reports, such as those dealing
with violent crime or assaults against law enforcement personnel, enjoy
the participation of almost all 17,000 police departments and law enforcement
authorities. Lieberman says that his organization is working to make contact
with those authorities that do not report hate crimes, in order to explain
the importance of handling these crimes. Even departments in whose jurisdiction
not a single hate crime was committed in the past year, as was the case
in 80 percent of police departments in the U.S., are required to fill
out a short report declaring that no hate crimes were committed, thereby
demonstrating that the police are aware of the importance of handling
of hate crimes in a special way.
A general look at the annual hate crimes report shows that the biggest
problem is still racist crimes against blacks. Racially motivated hate
crimes account for over half the recorded hate crimes. Last year, over
2,500 hate crimes against blacks were documented (compared to 830 against
whites and 231 against Asians). In second place are hate crimes based
on religion, in which the vast majority are crimes against Jews, and in
third place, sexually oriented hate crimes, mostly against homosexuals.
© Reprinted
with permission from Haaretz Daily
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