The escalation of anti-Semitism following the October 7, 2023 Hamas terrorist massacre in Israel has paved the way for attacks against Jewish communities around the world. Over the past year, schools, community centers and places of worship have faced threats, intimidation and physical violence.
Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, told Fox Information Digital that throughout 2024, the “level of presumed security” with which the American Jewish community has lived has changed. “That’s hard when you have a place you call home and suddenly it doesn’t feel like home anymore.” With the climate of “growing anti-Semitism” in the United States becoming “an accepted part of daily life,” Hauer said the issue “is still seen as a problem for Jewish people rather than a stain on society.” .
The suddenness of the change has been surprising, Hauer said. “Period as if we were a source of darkness,” he explained. “All those with whom we stood shoulder to shoulder to fight for their needs and their rights suddenly do not recognize us, which is jarring.”
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Anti-Semitic hatred on display at an anti-Israel protest in London. Antisemitism in the UK has reached record levels since the Hamas terrorist attacks on 7 October. (Campaign against anti-Semitism in X)
The Anti-Defamation League counted more than 10,000 anti-Semitic incidents between October 7, 2023 and October 6, 2024, up from 3,325 during the previous year and represents the highest annual total the group has ever counted. They include more than 8,000 incidents of harassment, 150 physical attacks and 1,840 acts of vandalism. Altogether, more than half of these incidents took place at anti-Israel demonstrations (more than 3,000) or at Jewish institutions (more than 2,000).
Some politicians and the United Nations (UN) have stoked internal hatred against Israel. In January, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution calling for a ceasefire in Gaza without also calling for the disarmament of Hamas, drawing widespread condemnation from Jewish community leaders.
Despite multiple US officials and the State Department condemning its spread of anti-Semitism, the UN special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories, Francesca Albanese, visited numerous US campuses in October while presenting her latest report to the Common Assembly of the UN. During a stop at the Barnard School, Albanese “described Israel’s war in Gaza as a ‘genocide,’ justified the October 7 attack, and questioned Israel’s right to exist.” The Times of Israel reported.
The victim, described by the Jewish United Fund as a “member of the Jewish community,” was shot in the shoulder in Chicago in an anti-Semitic hate crime. (Fox 32 Chicago)
The hatred that had been seeping onto college campuses took new shape when anti-Israel camps emerged at educational institutions across the country this spring. During some protests at the camps, Jewish students were excluded from their own spaces on campus.
Terrorist flags have been flown on US streets and universities during anti-Israel protests. School administrators and business leaders who have angered anti-Israel protesters have had their homes and institutions labeled with the inverted red triangle that Hamas uses to indicate military targets. In July, protesters replaced the American flag with the Palestinian flag in Washington, D.C., and wrote “Hamas is coming” on a statue of Christopher Columbus.
In September, Canadian and American authorities thwarted an ISIS-inspired attack on the Jewish community. On October 26, a Mauritanian citizen who entered the country illegally in March 2023 shot a Jewish worshiper in Chicago before engaging in a shootout with responding police and paramedics. Chicago leaders waited five days before confirming the religious identity of the suspect’s target and noting that the shooter had intentionally targeted the Jewish community.
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Jewish students at El Camino Actual Charter High School demonstrated to protest anti-Semitic incidents at the Woodland Hills, California, school on Tuesday, February 27, 2024 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Every Day News via Getty Photos)
Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney and founder of The Lawfare Undertaking, addressed the impetus for the atmosphere of intolerance, telling Fox Information Digital that “President Biden and the largely Democratic leaders of big cities across the country have not taken measures to limit the Jews.” hatred because it is politically inconvenient for them to enforce the civil rights of American Jews and ensure public safety.”
He said that “for years, the progressive left has ignored Jew-hatred coming from within its own ranks, choosing to ignore the reality that the Jewish people are a minority people who still need to maintain their legal protections from politics.” Marxist orientation. and Islamist-inspired attacks on their identity, on the indigenous right to their ancestral homeland and on their ability to enjoy equal protection under the law. Its politicians downplay Jewish identity to avoid being called out for their hypocrisy given their support for social justice for all people. other than Jews, and even to avoid prosecuting attacks against Jews as hate crimes, especially when the attackers are members of other minority communities.”
An anti-Israel sign with the phrase “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” at a protest near Tulane University in New Orleans. The phrase has been criticized for calling for the destruction of Israel. (Credit: Ryan Zamos)
Hate all over the world
Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Fox Information Digital that he feels the world is “at a tipping point” when it comes to anti-Semitic intolerance. As popular influencers on social media “normalize” hate toward Israel, national leaders around the world ramp up anti-Israel rhetoric, and extremists don’t “feel like they’re going to be held accountable” when they attack the Jewish community, Rabbi Cooper explained that it is “a perfect storm.”
In Europe, incidents of anti-Semitic hate have increased to the 800% seen in Sweden between 2022 and 2023. Jews across Europe have reported no longer wearing items that could identify their religion and have sometimes changed their names to avoid be attacked. In France, there has been a 430% increase in the number of Jews applying to immigrate to Israel from 2022 to 2023.
Although Ireland has a small Jewish population, it has seen a rise in anti-Semitic hatred and Jewish self-censorship. In December, Israel announced it would close its embassy in the country, citing the “delegitimization and demonization of the Jewish state” by Irish leaders.
The UK has also seen a huge rise in anti-Semitic hatred, with the Community Safety Trust reporting a record 1,978 anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2024. This included a 246% increase in “damage and desecration of Jewish property” between the first six months of 2023 and the first six months of 2024. The Israeli Minister of Affairs of the Diaspora and the organization that fights anti-Semitism said in March that due to its pro-Hamas atmosphere, London had become the “most anti-Semitic” of the world.
In late November, a bus carrying Jewish schoolchildren was attacked with stones after protesters harassed those on board. Days earlier, a man threw bottles at a group of Jewish teenagers, hitting and hospitalizing one of his targets.
The headlines about hatred towards the Jewish community abroad have been appalling. In June, a 12-year-old Jewish girl in France was raped by two teenagers because of her religion. In November, the body of Chabad Rabbi Zvi Kogan was found dead in the United Arab Emirates after he disappeared from his home in Abu Dhabi.
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At York University in Canada, anti-Semitic graffiti was scrawled in a classroom on October 26, 2023. (Courtesy of the Jewish Campus Learning Initiative)
More than nine synagogues around the world have been targeted by arson attacks since October 7, according to a social media post by Hen Mazzig, a senior researcher at the Tel Aviv Institute. The latest attack occurred on December 18 in Montreal at a synagogue that was also attacked in November 2023, the New York Post reported. Just two days later, shots were fired overnight at a Jewish elementary school in Toronto. It was the third school shooting since May, according to the Instances of Israel.
Another recent arson attack took place at a synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, on December 6. The Simon Wiesenthal Center responded to the incident by issuing a travel warning for Australia, explaining that the country’s leaders had failed to confront “persistent demonization, harassment and violence against Jews and Jewish institutions.”
A member of the Jewish community recovers an item from the Adass Israel synagogue on December 6, 2024 in Melbourne, Australia. An arson attack on the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne forced worshipers to flee as flames engulfed the building early Friday morning. (Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Photos)
Just a month earlier, the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a similar advisory for the Netherlands after a soccer match led to a “Jew hunt,” in which Jewish fans were tracked down and attacked in the city. The incident sparked another attempted “Jew hunt” in Antwerp and attacks on a Berlin youth soccer team.
When Cooper’s group placed the travel warning in the Netherlands, he told Fox Information Digital that “theoretically, a travel warning could apply to almost every place in Western Europe.”
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Anti-Israel protesters hold a banner and chant at a protest in London on December 9, 2023. (Photo by Andy Soloman/UCG/Common Photos Group via Getty Photos)
In the United States, with anti-Jewish bigotry infiltrating elite universities, workplaces, the medical community and the entertainment industry, Rabbi Cooper summarized that “the challenges ahead are going to be quite daunting.” He also noted that he is hopeful because of the resilience of the Jewish community and the security that American democracy provides.
Cooper said many appointees of President Trump’s incoming administration, including incoming U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, Rep. Elise Stefanik, are “advocates for our community.” As they begin to implement new policies, he said he believes “a lot of good things can happen very, very quickly.”
