Hate crimes are on a significant increase, especially crimes against Jewish people. This is an ancient hate, and it sure seems to be making a resurgence. It's also a fundamentally irrational hate, but then, what such hatreds are not irrational?
This trend in particular is concerning. Since 2019, crimes against Jewish people have skyrocketed by almost 70 percent. That's a very real, and growing, problem.
Last week, two men—one Asian, one Jewish—were stabbed in broad daylight in front of a synagogue on the Upper West Side by an assailant who yelled “Allahu Akbar.” The suspect is being charged with attempted murder and hate crimes against both victims. Mayor Zohran Mamdani condemned the attack, which came just days after he issued yet another extensive denunciation of the world’s only Jewish state.
The attack is part of a troubling pattern. Hate crimes, especially against Jews, have risen sharply since 2019. They jumped 69 percent in 2023, and they continue to climb in 2026. Two weeks ago, two synagogues in Eastern Queens were defaced with feces and motor oil. In early June, a Jewish woman was beaten, choked, and had her hair torn out on the subway after her attacker shouted, “Jews are eating kids. You’re a Jew I smell the kids.” In Brooklyn, an elderly Jewish man was shoved to the ground as the aggressor said, “that’s what Jews deserve.”
What's interesting about all this is that these crimes, while indeed aimed at Jews, aren't entirely ideological. Many of the attacks are committed by career criminals, for whom the crimes described are best described as "thrill-seeking." Yes, these are sick people.
Many are rightly worried about whether this surge is driven by rising racial or religious animus, and by language like Mamdani’s. But deterring future offenses requires remembering that hate crime doesn’t spring only from bias. It grows from the same soil as ordinary, low-level crime.
Hate criminals often commit other crimes. In a 2023 Manhattan Institute report, Charles Fain Lehman found that, according to New York State data, hate-crime offenders are remarkably similar to non-hate-crime offenders across almost every category: age, sex, prior convictions, prior felonies, and rearrest rate.
Nor do many hate crime offenders have distinct motivations. In a 2002 report, Jack McDevitt, Jack Levin, and Susan Bennett identified four kinds of hate crime: thrill-seeking, defensive (guarding turf), retaliatory (revenge for a previous attack), and mission (the drive to eliminate a group). In their study of hate crimes in Boston, thrill-seeking accounted for 66 percent of cases. Defensive crimes made up 25 percent, retaliatory 8 percent, and mission less than 1 percent.
That's interesting. And it points out a possible mitigation of this growing problem.
Read More: Jewish Bakery in Toronto Now Struck by Gunfire in Suspected Hate Attack
'Allahu Akbar': Two Men Stabbed in Broad Daylight on Manhattan's Upper West Side
The answer here would seem to be the answer to any increase in violent crime, regardless of motivation, and that answer takes four parts:
First, zero tolerance for minor infractions, the "gateway crimes", like shoplifting, vandalism and petty theft. Goblins who are allowed to get away with these crimes with little or no consequence will, sooner or later, escalate.
Second, enhanced and highly visible police presence. A pair of armed cops, not in a car but on foot, walking the beat, is a very effective deterrent. Especially in high-risk areas, beat cops send a clear message: "Not here, you don't."
Third, eliminate the revolving-door justice systems prevalent in too many of our large cities, like New York. Eliminate the release-on-recognizance for anyone accused of any violent crime. Keep them locked up until their trial.
Fourth and finally, enhanced sentencing. Three-strikes laws had a measurable effect on crime in the 1990s. Those laws are simple but effective: After your third conviction for a violent crime, you are taken off the board. No parole. No reduced sentence. If we have to build more prisons, we build more prisons.
The whole notion of a "hate crime" is rather a canard. It presumes that the intention of an attacker should somehow be added to the facts of the attack itself, and such classifications are too easily abused by activist prosecutors and judges. A violent crime is a violent crime, and regardless of motivations, the best resolutions are the ones that are proven to work: No tolerance of petty crime, a visible police presence on the streets, and harsh penalties for attackers.
These are the needful acts. And they are the opposite of what municipal leaders like New York's Mayor Mamdani are putting in place.
Editor’s Note: New York City is now facing the consequences of Mayor Zohran Mamdani’s socialist takeover.
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