Soccer Dad

Anti-jewish hate crimes revisited

Previously I've written about hate crimes in America. One item that stood out was that Jews are victims of hate crimes at a higher rate than blacks. At the time though, there was no more information as to whether hate crimes were broken down as being against persons or against property.

Well the 2004 hate crimes statistics do have such a breakdown. And it is clear that if the yardstick for measuring hate crimes are crimes against persons, hate crimes against blacks are perpetrated more frequently than those against Jews. (There were 2220 physical attacks against blacks; 297 against Jews. Anti-Islamic hate crimes remain very low despite the media attention.)

In the hate crime report, I wish they would explain what intimidation means.

Anti-Jewish hate crimes then are largely against property. I wonder if these crimes usually occur in areas where there is Jewish property - such as cemeteries - but few if any Jews?

I had intended to revisit this topic, but the Ignoble Experiment's musings on prejudice (and experience with the victim of a hate crime) encouraged me to write about it now. (Incidentally it's funny how Labor party leader Amir Peretz's is brought up frequently. The top posts in Israel's government over the past 10 years gone to Sephardim: Yitzchak Mordechai, David Levy, Shlomo ben Ami, Silvan Shalom, Binyamin ben Eliezer and Shaul Mofaz. Why anyone would play up the Sephardi background of anyone in Israeli politics in this point is beyond me. I'm not going to say that there are no social problems, but the integration of Sephardim seems pretty complete.)

Technorati tags: antisemitism, hate crimes.

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