Jews, who make up roughly 10% of New York City’s population, were the target of nearly 70% of all confirmed hate crimes in the city last month, according to newly released NYPD data. The department recorded 33 confirmed hate crimes in July, 23 of them anti-Jewish, a 53.3% increase over the 15 recorded in July 2025. Muslims were the second most targeted group, the victims of five confirmed hate crimes, up from two a year earlier.
The July numbers extend a pattern that has held since Mayor Zohran Mamdani took office on January 1, 2026. Confirmed antisemitic hate crimes for the year now stand at 205, up 8.5% from 189 over the same stretch in 2025, and Jews have accounted for 56.9% of all confirmed hate crimes citywide during Mamdani’s first seven months in office. Anti-Muslim incidents have also risen, though from a much smaller base, climbing from 16 to 26 over the same period. The city changed its reporting practices shortly after Mamdani took office: after recording a 182% spike in anti-Jewish hate crimes in his first month alone, 31 incidents compared to 11 in January 2025, the city began publishing only “confirmed” hate crimes rather than “reported” ones starting in February, before agreeing in March to publish both figures separately each month. Last month, 58% of all reported hate crimes, whether or not they were ultimately confirmed, targeted Jews.
NYPD Commissioner Jessica Tisch, who is Jewish, paired the hate crime data with a separate milestone, noting that the city recorded the fewest murders, shootings, and shooting victims in its recorded history for both July and the first seven months of the year. “These incredible public safety achievements are the result of our data-driven precision policing strategy,” she said, crediting the department’s broader crime strategy even as antisemitic hate crimes moved in the opposite direction from every other major crime category.
Jewish Leaders Draw a Direct Line to the Mayor
The connection between the numbers and Mamdani’s own conduct has not been left to inference. When the January spike first became public, the ADL’s Scott Richman called the rise “staggering,” telling Jewish News Syndicate that “from swastikas at a playground in Borough Park to a car ramming at Chabad headquarters in Crown Heights, the Jewish community in New York City is very much on edge.” Liz Berney of the Zionist Organization of America was blunter still when asked whether Jewish New Yorkers were on edge specifically because of Mamdani.
The pattern has continued as the year has gone on. Following the July stabbing of a Jewish man near Central Park by a suspect who allegedly shouted “Allahu Akbar,” a short walk from the victim’s own synagogue, Jewish and Democratic leaders openly split over whether to blame Mamdani’s rhetoric. One conservative Democrat wrote on X that “when Mayor Mamdani and his allies relentlessly single out and demonize the world’s only Jewish state, they create a climate where antisemitic violence thrives. Mr. Mayor, this is on you.” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said separately that the mayor’s continued focus on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom Mamdani has repeatedly threatened to arrest if he enters the city despite lacking legal authority to do so, leaves Jews feeling more exposed. Netanyahu himself has accused Mamdani directly of “fomenting hate.” Mamdani has maintained that his criticism targets a political leader rather than a religious community. “They are critiques of a political leader, not of people of a specific faith or a religion or a background,” he said, adding that keeping every New Yorker safe remains his responsibility “no matter where they come from, what they believe in.”
The friction predates any single incident. Within hours of his inauguration, Mamdani signed an executive order reversing several of his predecessor’s pro-Israel policies, including the city’s adoption of the IHRA definition of antisemitism and a bar on city investment in businesses that discriminate against Israel. A coalition spanning the ADL, UJA-Federation of New York, the Jewish Community Relations Council, and the New York Board of Rabbis responded jointly that “singling out Israel for sanctions is not the way to make Jewish New Yorkers feel included and safe.” Israel’s consul general in New York, Ofir Akunis, went further, saying the move “pose[d] an immediate threat to the safety of Jewish communities in New York City and could lead to an increase in violent antisemitic attacks throughout the city,” a warning that, seven months and a 53% July spike later, Jewish leaders now say has been borne out.
The Same Pattern, Across the Atlantic
The UK’s Community Security Trust reported this week that antisemitic incidents across Britain rose 21% in the first half of 2026 compared to the same period last year, the second-highest first-half total on record, with 1,926 incidents logged between January and June, up from 1,598. That works out to an average of 321 incidents a month, nearly double the pre-October 7 baseline.
The rise in physical violence outpaced the overall increase by a wide margin. Assaults climbed 82% year-over-year to 135 recorded incidents, school-related incidents rose 59% to 178, and synagogue-related incidents increased 31%. CST specifically tied the acceleration to the outbreak of the US-Israel war with Iran in late February, and pointed to two incidents as turning points: the April 29 terror stabbing of two visibly Jewish men in Golders Green, which triggered 71 further antisemitic incidents in the following three days alone, and a wave of arson attacks on London synagogues and Jewish-linked properties, including burned Hatzola ambulances and strikes on multiple synagogues connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps and claimed by a group later proscribed by the UK government. That spring violence followed the October 2025 Manchester synagogue attack that killed two worshippers on Yom Kippur.
CST chief executive Mark Gardner framed the threat as extending beyond the Jewish community alone. “These attacks should concern everyone who cares about Britain and the threats against it, whether state-directed from Iran, or internally driven by Islamist, far Right, far Left, or other ideological extremes,” he said. “These attacks are directed against British Jews, but they are also attacks on Britain and our society.” Policing Minister Sarah Jones called the figures “appalling” and pointed to a newly announced £250 million, roughly $336 million, three-year commitment to protect Jewish schools, synagogues, and community centers with additional police officers. Shadow Home Secretary Chris Philp went further, calling the situation “a national emergency.”
Two cities, two governments, and two very different sets of officials are now confronting the same underlying pattern within months of each other: a surge in violence against Jewish communities that has outpaced every other category of hate crime, arriving alongside heightened political rhetoric around Israel that Jewish leaders in both countries say is no longer separable from the violence itself.
