Underlying our public debate about anti-Semitism is the belief that we’re dealing with a kind of punctuated equilibrium: periods of mostly stable levels of anti-Semitism followed by occasional bursts that give us a new normal.
But what if that’s wrong? What if there aren’t periods of stability anymore?
Post-October 7 anti-Semitism seemed primed to follow the usual pattern, in which certain metrics of anti-Semitism will improve after the surge and others will level off at the crest of the surge. So all the metrics are considered in light of the assumption that the surge will fade as the Hamas attacks get further in the rearview mirror.
But the surge is acting funny.
When Tel Aviv University released its annual report on worldwide anti-Semitism for the year 2025, the main headline was that more Jews had been killed in anti-Semitic incidents (20) than in any year in over three decades. It was no consolation to say that this was because there was a massacre in Australia that pushed the numbers so high and that such massacres are blessedly rare—after all, attempted anti-Jewish massacres continue to take place. If the recent attack on a Reform shul in Michigan had succeeded, God forbid, 2026 would far surpass 2025 on this metric just a few months into the year. To be Jewish in some parts of the world now is to feel more like a target than ever.
Delving into the report far beyond that headline statistic reveals why that feeling is so widely shared: Three years after October 7, violent anti-Semitism is still rising across parts of the West.
In France, the report notes, there were 300 fewer overall anti-Semitic incidents. The total number for 2025 was still nearly 1,000 more than in 2022, before the Hamas attacks. But there’s even worse news: “The number of incidents involving physical violence reached 126 in 2025, up from 106 in 2024, 85 in 2023, and 43 in 2022.”
The category of “total incidents” isn’t indicative, therefore, of the real trend of anti-Semitism in France. Examples from the report: “the March 2025 assault of Chief Rabbi Arié Engelberg of Orléans while he was walking home from synagogue with his young son. The attacker reportedly confirmed that Engelberg was Jewish and then beat and insulted him. Later that spring, Rabbi Elie Lemmel was attacked twice within one week: first punched in the stomach in Deauville, and then struck in the head with a chair at a café in Neuilly-sur-Seine.”
The report notes that incidents of vandalism are also down slightly. But the increase in violent incidents was greater than the decrease in vandalism, suggesting that Jew-haters in France are changing tactics and getting more dangerous. Again, this is something the overall number of incidents won’t tell you.
Regarding Canada, the report—which relies on country-specific sources—has only the number of overall incidents. And that one’s not good: About 600 more in 2025 than the year before; 2024 also exceeded 2023. Again, wrong direction. And while we don’t have the breakdown of physical violence to other types of incidents, we do know the violence remains a key concern: “The year’s most serious physical assaults on Jews in Canada included the August 27 stabbing of a Jewish woman in her seventies while she was shopping in the kosher section of an Ottawa grocery. On August 8, a 32-year-old Hasidic Jewish father was beaten in a park in Montreal in front of his children in an assault partly captured on video and widely circulated online.”
The news isn’t great in the United Kingdom either. The number of overall anti-Semitic incidents in the UK in 2025 was higher than in 2024 (though lower than in 2023). The Community Security Trust keeps a category of “extreme violence,” and there were four such incidents in 2025—double the number of the year before. The report highlights the terrorist attack on a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur in which two were killed, and states for posterity: “It was the first fatal antisemitic attack recorded by the CST since it began its surveys in 1984.”
In Australia, as one might expect from reading recent headlines, anti-Semitic incidents increased in 2025 over 2024. As for violence, 15 were murdered in the Bondi Beach massacre in December.
Belgium’s anti-Semitism-monitoring organization recorded a massive increase in overall anti-Jewish incidents, from 129 in 2024 to 232 in 2025. Physical assaults also increased, as did vandalism. Across the board, another European country gone off the rails, it would seem.
In 2025, Italy saw a rise in overall anti-Semitic events and assaults, according to the report.
In Spain, too, anti-Semitic incidents increased—an unsurprising result considering the amount of time and effort the government of Pedro Sanchez spends demonizing the Jewish state.
In Norway, overall incidents went down, but acts of violence increased from one to four.
The only somewhat bright spot—and that is really stretching the description—in this group was Germany, which saw fewer overall incidents and fewer acts of anti-Semitic violence. It should come as no surprise that the Western country in which the numbers are at least moving in the right direction is also the only place in Europe that has made an effort to combat anti-Zionism and demonization of Israel at the national level.
We can stop pretending that the constant vilification of the world’s only Jewish state has no clear and dangerous consequences for the Jews of the world. Moreover, we don’t really know if the surge will taper off any time soon. Anti-Semitism in the West continues to defy predictions in the worst way possible.
Source:
www.commentary.org
