Exploiting Hate

Will anything puncture the pomposity of the politicians pushing hate-crime hysteria? News broke Thursday that a disturbed American-Israeli teen is largely responsible for six months of bomb threats to Jewish Community Centers around the globe. This, after word that some of the calls came from an also-troubled left-wing journalist angry at a Jewish ex-girlfriend.

So much for all the pols, from Gov. Cuomo on down, citing the threats as proof that the rise of Donald Trump had created an “antiSemitic atmosphere.”

Mayor de Blasio has taken to pointing to rising NYPD hate-crime statistics as more evidence. Yet, as we’ve noted before, these overwhelmingly reflect an increase in re

ports of “hate crimes” — vanishingly few of which allege actual assaults.

Consider the “surge” in hate on the subway: all of 22 cases of hate crimes (mainly swastikas) reported this year through Sunday, up from five reports in the same period in 2016. That’s a 340 percent jump — to a still tiny level. Nor are the motives known, and faked hate crimes are a very real thing.

In acknowledging the arrest of the Israeli kid, Cuomo still called the JCC threats a “despicable hate crime.” Sort of — but hardly one that justifies the governor’s bid to launch a new state hate-crime task force.

Even a clear-cut hate crime can bring an unhinged response. White supremacist James Harris Jackson is under arrest for the murder of a 66-year-old black man in Midtown. City Council Speaker Melissa MarkViverito opted to fire off a statement blaming President Trump for empowering the “ugly underbelly of racism” in America and insisting “there is simply no place for hate or intolerance in our city.”

This, from a woman who lionizes convicted terrorist Oscar Lopez Rivera — a leader of a group whose bombs killed and maimed dozens of innocents here and in Chicago.

Hate is real and wrong, but efforts to exploit it for partisan political gain are squalid.