Hate’s Hidden Home Part 2: Follow Up In 2024 On Anti-Jewish Incidents in Montgomery County Maryland

May 7, 2024

Background

In January 2024, we posted the initial Part 1 which featured a very detailed series of graphs and charts showing how anti-Jewish Hate/Bias incidents in Montgomery County Maryland have increased over the timeframe of July 2022 to October 2024 (inclusive) as compared to Hate/Bias incidents against other groups.

Data Sources

Data sets were sourced from the Month to Month Hate Bias summaries from the Montgomery County Police Department here: Hate, Bias Summaries, Montgomery County Police Department, Montgomery County, MD (montgomerycountymd.gov)

Context

This update comes as this week the Montgomery County School Board President Karla Silvestre is due before congress to talk about antisemitism in schools.

We didn’t go into as much detail this time around but felt it was important to provide an update before this congressional hearing.

Thus, for this update, we are comparing total number of anti-Jewish hate/bias incidents, percent those incidents make up, and the per month total over the full time period from our previous report compared to the more recent time period. The data cutoff from one set to the other was October 31, 2023.

Follow Up Data – Anti-Jewish hate/bias incidents in Montgomery county Maryland

July 2022-October 2023

All incidents – 156 for 38% = 9.75 per month
Schools/colleges 83 for 61% = 5.19 per month

November 2023 – March 2024

All incidents – 91/207 = 43.96% = 18.2 per month
Schools/Colleges – 40/71 = 57.74% = 8.2 per month

October 2023

For October of 2023, 18 out of 37 for all incidents and 10 out of 16 for schools/colleges occurred after October 7th. So if we were looking simply at before and after the Hamas attack occurred and the war began, the numbers would be even more lopsided as the month of October exceeded the average of both time periods.

Chart Comparing First Report (16 months) to Second Report (5 months)

Per Month Increase from First Report to Second Report

For Overall Incidents, 9.75 to 18.2 represents an 86.67% increase in anti-Jewish Hate/Bias incidents

For Schools/Colleges, 5.19 to 8.2 per month represents a 58% increase in anti-Jewish Hate/Bias incidents

Keep in mind that the first report did actually look at each month and there were peak months that were higher than the per month average of this second report. For schools, 5 of the 16 months were higher than the average over the second report and for overall, 3 of the 16 months were higher than the average over the second report (note that one month for each of those is October 2023 the majority of which occurred after the Hamas attack occurred and the war began). A more granular month to month approach will be used again in Part 3.

Percentage Change from First Report to Second Report

For Overall Incidents, 38% to 43.96% represents an 15.68% increase in anti-Jewish Hate/Bias incidents percentage of overall incidents

For Schools/Colleges, 61% to 57.74% represents a 5.34% decrease in anti-Jewish Hate/Bias incidents percentage of overall incidents

Potential Biases and Caveats

Note that we discussed some of the potential biases of this data in Part 1. It’s also important to note this is data includes all Schools and Colleges in Montgomery County (not just MCPS).

Additionally, the % of all incidents represented by Anti-Jewish Hate/Bias incidents was still relatively close amongst the two data sets which seems to indicate that other types of Hate/Bias incidents are likely increasing as well.

We will have to take a further detailed look (in Part 3) at how other groups fared in the time since the first report, continue to add more current months data as it comes in, and look month to month comparing the first report to second one instead of as a whole.

Conclusion

Since anti-Jewish incidents were already greatly increasing during the latter half of the previous report, these charts don’t tell the full picture of whether anti-Jewish hate/bias continues to increase or is just sustaining at a high-level, though adding in the October month further supports the idea it is increasing since October 7, 2024 (after already increasing over previous 15 months). Either way it is concerning and a great increase over previous months and years.

Heading into the congressional hearing, Montgomery County and Schools anti-Jewish hate/bias incidents continue to trend in the wrong direction. Many do not believe there is a necessary amount of work being done to resolve this increase in hate, particularly in MCPS.

Per MoCo360, the hearing and testimony comes as MCPS “faces a federal Title VI investigation into the way the district has handled antisemitism in schools, as reported by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency in February. A second Title VI complaint also was filed against MCPS by the Zionist Organization of America in mid-April, which alleges that the district has failed to address “severe, persistent and pervasive antisemitism in schools.””

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