The Massachusetts Executive Office of Public Safety & Security’s 2023 report on hate crimes identified a 70 percent increase in incidents of anti-Jewish crime from 2022 to 2023. More were reported in 2023, 119, than in any of the previous eight years, according to past hate crime reports, and marked the third straight year in which Jews and Jewish organizations were targeted more frequently than the year before.
The state posts its yearly hate crime reports going back to 2015, and until 2023, the number of annual antisemitic incidents had never exceeded 90, back in 2017.
Last year, the Anti-Defamation League reported a 40-year high in antisemitic incidents in 2023 in New England. The organization identified 623 incidents of assault, harassment, and vandalism in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New Hampshire, Maine, and Vermont, a 205 percent increase over 2022. About 44 percent of those incidents happened after Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel, the organization reported.
The local increase in antisemitism mirrors national trends. The Anti-Defamation League identified a 140 percent increase in antisemitic activity nationally in 2023 over the prior year.
Source: The Boston Globe
URL: https://www.bostonglobe.com/2025/01/02/metro/hate-crime-bias-massachusetts-antisemitism-jewish-arab-gaza/