US Jews ‘Getting Hit From All Sides’ in Surge of Antisemitic Attacks, FBI Director Tells Congress

The American Jewish community is “getting hit from all sides” amid a nationwide rise in antisemitic attacks, Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) Director Christopher Wray said on Thursday at a House Homeland Security Committee hearing on Capitol Hill.

“Antisemitism and violence that comes out of it is a persistent and present fact,” Wray said in response to a question from Rep. Josh Gottheimer (NJ-5) about the FBI’s handling of threats facing U.S. Jews.

“The numbers that we’ve seen, about 63 percent of religious hate crimes, overall, are motivated by antisemitism, and that’s targeting a group that just makes up about 2.4% of the American population,” he pointed out. “So it’s a community that deserves, and desperately needs, our support.”

The FBI director noted that cases of hate crimes and domestic terrorism tied to antisemitism had been “elevated to a national threat priority.”

Commenting on the FBI’s thwarting of a plot against a synagogue in New Jersey last week, Wray said he was “pleased we were able to make an arrest.”

Watch Wray’s remarks in full below: