The outburst of disgusting antisemitism among students and others across the country, and their support of a brutal terrorist organization like Hamas, should be no surprise given how radical-left professors dominate academia and how extremist propaganda masquerades as teaching at colleges and universities these days.

Susan Sarandon, an actress who seems to epitomize the cultural and historical ignorance that infects Hollywood, has already had to apologize for an outburst in which she justified this vicious antisemitism by saying that Jews “are getting a taste of what it feels like to be a Muslim in this country.”

Really?

Is it true that Muslims are disproportionately targeted with anti-Islamic, anti-Muslim behavior, as Ms. Sarandon seems to think? And have American Jews been skating along and not having to deal with antisemitism until Hamas’ murders of Israeli men, women and children on Oct. 7?

Let’s be very clear here. No one should be targeted because of their ethnicity or their religion, whether they’re Jewish or Muslim. We are a nation founded on the principle of religious freedom, and that is a bedrock tenet of our republican structure.

One of the best indicators on this issue are the hate-crime statistics reported annually by the FBI. Contrary to what Ms. Sarandon said, FBI statistics for 2022, the latest year reported, show that Muslims have had a much easier time of it than Jews.

In 2022, the FBI reported 11,634 hate-crime incidents involving 13,278 people. Of those incidents, 2,042 (17.5%) were based on religion. Under hate crimes classified according to religion, there were 1,305 anti-Jewish incidents, while there were only 205 anti-Muslim incidents reported. So the number of hate crimes against Jews was over six times the number of anti-Islamic and anti-Muslim hate crimes.

The FBI breaks down the location of the hate crimes, too. Of the anti-Jewish incidents, 86 were against synagogues, while of the anti-Islamic hate crimes, 21 were against mosques. So Jewish places of worship were far more likely to be vandalized or otherwise hit than Muslim religious institutions.

How many people were victims as opposed to a business or religious organization?

According to the 2022 report, 731 Americans were the victims of anti-Jewish hate crimes, while 221 Americans were the victims of anti-Muslim hate crimes — again antisemitic crimes being several times commoner.

These are the numbers updated by the FBI as of Nov. 12. It will be late in 2024 before we get the statistics for 2023. But given the large numbers of assaults and attempted intimidation of Jews that we have seen since Oct. 7, there seems little doubt that these numbers will be much larger in next year’s FBI report.

From the mob at Harvard University, which included the editor of the Harvard Law Review, that cornered and shouted at a Jewish student, to the Jewish man recently attacked in Brooklyn, New York, while his attacker was yelling antisemitic slurs, such incidents are happening all over the country.

You know we have a problem when you have professors at universities like Cornell saying the murderous Hamas attack on civilians was “exhilarating” and “energizing” or at the Art Institute of Chicago calling Israelis “pigs” and “irredeemable excrement.”

When 200,000 people showed up in Washington to protest Hamas and its terrorist attacks in Israel, it was a peaceful rally without any violence. The same can’t be said of the recent pro-Hamas protest near Rockefeller Center in New York.

This contrast speaks for itself. We will no doubt see this reflected in the 2024 report when the 14,631 local, state and federal law enforcement agencies from which the FBI collects these hate-crime statistics provide information on the cases they investigated and prosecuted in 2023.

Expect the same disproportionate attacks on Jews that we saw in the 2022 report, except much worse.

Republished from The Heritage Foundation.