There were 24 hate crime murders in the U.S. last year, according to data released by the FBI on Tuesday, CBS News reported, the highest number since the bureau started keeping track of such killings in 1991.
Eleven of those murders in 2018 were during the massacre at the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh.
Overall hate crimes fell somewhat in 2018 after three consecutive years of increases, with 7,036 incidents last year compared to 7,175 in 2017, according to the FBI data.
Fifty seven and a half percent of the single-bias hate crime incidents last year were motivated by a bias based on race, ethnicity or ancestry; 20.2 percent were motivated by religious bias and 17 percent due to a bias based on sexual-orientation.
Of those incidents motivated by religious bias, 57.8 percent were anti-Jewish, according to the FBI.
Anti-Defamation League CEO Jonathan Greenblatt said in a press release that “It is unacceptable that Jews and Jewish institutions continue to be at the center of religion-based hate crime attacks. We need to take concrete action to address and combat this significant problem.”
The ADL also pointed out that the data showing an overall slight decline in hate crimes from the previous year has to be taken with a grain of salt.
This is because the FBI’s data is based on voluntary recording of statistics from local law enforcement, and 110 fewer agencies participated in this latest report and thus whatever hate crimes happened in their jurisdictions were not counted.
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