Pogroms, beatings, threats: A wave of antisemitism unseen since World War II sweeps Europe

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On Mar. 8, tens of thousands of Parisians took part in a march marking International Women's Day. However, the event failed to demonstrate a true sense of solidarity and support for women in their struggle for rights. Instead, members of Nous Vivrons (“We Will Live”) — a movement that advocates “for the rights of Jewish women who have been raped, mutilated, used as tools of war by Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023” — were pushed into a separate column.

A few days earlier, calls to prevent “Zionists” from participating in the march circulated on social media. During the rally, the Nous Vivrons column was held back by police officers, who stopped it from joining the general procession. According to some accounts, pro-Palestinian groups shouting anti-Israel slogans blocked Jewish feminists from entering Republic Square.

“On Mar. 8, 2025, neo-feminism turned into antisemitism in the name of the Palestinian cause,” a Le Figaro columnist wrote.

Record levels of hatred

France's Jewish community, the largest in Europe, numbers approximately 440,000 people. As Rabbi Shmuel Lubecki of Rouen told The Insider, French Jews have not felt safe for a long time. And Lubecki’s community has faced a tangible threat, making the vulnerability especially acute.

In May 2023, the Rouen synagogue was badly damaged in an arson attack. A 29-year-old Algerian threw a Molotov cocktail at the building, used a knife to assault police officers who arrived at the scene, and was shot dead. The incident occurred at dawn, so there were no casualties. Then, in early 2025, both the synagogue and the rabbi's house were attacked by vandals, who spraypainted swastikas along with calls to send “Jewish rapists to the gas chambers.” Some young community members have left for Israel, and many more are considering the move, says Lubecki.

The war in Gaza has brought antisemitic sentiment in France to record levels. According to a 2024 study by the Fondapol think tank and the American Jewish Committee (AJC), 76% of the French believe antisemitism is widespread in their country. In 2022, 64% thought so. Among Jewish respondents, the rate is even higher — 92% (against 85% in 2022). Most are worried for their safety, with 86% of French Jews admitting that after Oct. 7, they have “feared becoming the target of an antisemitic attack.”

France's Jewish Community Protection Service (SPCJ) recorded more than 1,600 antisemitic incidents in 2023, which is more than in the three previous years combined. At the same time, more than 1,200 of them occurred in October-December, i.e. in the first months after the Hamas terrorist attack (for comparison: in the same period of 2022 the number was 107). Eighty-five of the cases involved physical attacks on Jews.

In 2024, the SPCJ counted 1,570 antisemitic acts, of which as many as 106 involved physical aggression — the highest rate in the past decade.

There were several egregious examples. In July 2024, two passers-by threw an elderly Jewish woman to the ground, kicked her, and shouted antisemitic slurs: “Filthy Jew, this is what you get!” A month earlier, three teenagers had beaten and raped a 12-year-old Jewish girl; the attackers also called her a “filthy Jew” and threatened to kill her. Last January, a group of six men shouting “Zionist fascists!” beat up two Jewish students at Strasbourg University. In December 2023, a man armed with a knife broke into a Jewish kindergarten outside Paris and threatened the principal with rape and mutilation, invoking the Oct. 7 massacre. In mid-October of that year, burglars ravaged the apartment of a Jewish family in Grenoble, leaving “Free Palestine,” swastikas, and antisemitic threats on the walls.

Also alarming is the growing level of passive antisemitism — that is, an attitude that does not lead to action. According to a September poll commissioned by the Conseil représentatif des institutions juives de France (Representative Council of French Jewish Institutions, hereinafter CRIF), 12% of the French consider the outflux of Jews to be a positive development (compared to 6% in 2020). Among respondents under 35 years of age, the figure is even higher: 17%.

In addition, 14% of French youth sympathize with Hamas. “This is contrary to the historical trend. Young people [turned out to be] more susceptible to antisemitic, Islamist, and conspiracy theories that are being spread on social media,” CRIF President Yonathan Arfi noted.

Several studies conducted since the outbreak of the Gaza war point to the widespread nature of prejudice against Jews, especially among French Muslims. Thus, 31% of respondents believe that “Jews are richer than the average Frenchman,” 27% agree with the statement that Jews “exploit the memory of the Holocaust,” and 25% agree that Jews have “too much power in the economic and financial spheres.” In the Muslim community, 50% of respondents maintain these stereotypes.

Overall, nearly half (46%) of the French population believes at least six of the study’s 16 antisemitic stereotypes about topics ranging from Jewish wealth to Jewish loyalty to Israel and the power of the Jewish lobby.

These data largely coincide with the results of a global survey of antisemitic attitudes conducted by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) among 58,000 respondents in more than 100 countries. As it turns out, 46% of the world's adult population has “deeply ingrained” negative perceptions of Jews. Ten years ago, this figure was half as high.

A similar increase in the level of antisemitic attitudes was noted among respondents under 35 years of age. Thus, 40% of young people (versus 29% in the 50+ age group) agreed with the statement that “Jews are responsible for most of the world's wars.”

“A fire that got out of control”

A similar pattern is visible in other European countries after October 2023. Fearing for their safety, many Jews avoid visiting Jewish sites, stop wearing identity signs such as the kippah and the Star of David, remove mezuzahs from their front doorposts, and even conceal their names on mailboxes. Not only religious but also secular Jews are victims of persecution, aggression, and threats.

“We are fighting for the continuation of Jewish life in Europe,” Rabbi Menachem Margolin, chairman of the European Jewish Association, said a year ago. “Jews in traditional dress or those with mezuzahs on their doors face persecution. Jewish students are threatened and expelled from university courses, while xenophobic graffiti continues to vandalize Jewish homes, synagogues, and cemeteries.”

The most high-profile incident occurred last November in Amsterdam, where a mob of pro-Palestinian protesters hunted down Israeli soccer fans. The attack was coordinated: Israelis were chased and ambushed outside hotels, beaten, run over with cars, and pushed into canals. More than 20 people sustained injuries. In Israel, the incident was interpreted as a “Jewish pogrom.”

Most such incidents receive coverage only in the reports of human rights groups involved in monitoring antisemitism. In London, a group of teenagers threw rocks and garbage at a school bus carrying Jewish school students; several attackers forced their way inside, filming the terrified children’s response to their shouts of “F*ck Israel, nobody likes you!” In Zurich, a teenager of Tunisian origin stabbed an orthodox Jew. In Copenhagen, a subway passenger spat at Denmark's chief rabbi, showing him the middle finger. In Vienna, members of a neo-Nazi group attacked a religious Jew, ripping off his kippah. In Ghent, Belgium, a court acquitted writer Herman Brusselmans, who admitted in his column for a popular weekly that a photograph of a crying Palestinian child “whose mother is buried under rubble” made him want to “stick a sharp knife in the throat of every Jew I meet.” The quote enraged many civil society organizations and prompted a hate speech lawsuit, but the court stood up for “freedom of speech.”

In the UK, home to some 270,000 Jews, 2023 was also marked by a record number of antisemitic incidents. Of the 4,300 reported cases, more than half (2,700) occurred after Oct. 7. In 2024, the total number dropped to 3,500, but that's still 1.5 to 2 times as high as in previous years. Six percent of cases involved violence.

In Germany, home to some 120,000 Jews, more than 2,200 “politically motivated antisemitic crimes” were committed between October and December 2023 alone — more than four times as many as in the same period in 2022. The year 2024 saw roughly 4,500 such incidents. “The lives of German Jews are in the biggest danger since the Shoah,” Felix Klein, Germany's federal commissioner against antisemitism, commented. “Antisemitism permeates all strata of society.”

Such sentiments are also rampant in countries with smaller Jewish communities, such as Switzerland, Austria, the Czech Republic, Ireland, and Scandinavian states, according to the reports of relevant NGOs.

Since Oct. 7, Ireland has stood out as Europe’s fiercest critic of Israel. The authorities in Dublin not only recognized the state of Palestine but also passed a resolution accusing Israel of genocide against the people of Gaza and joined South Africa's lawsuit against Israel in the International Court of Justice. In response, Israel decided to close its embassy in Dublin.

In 2024, a report by the educational NGO Impact-se exposed gross distortions of historical facts and biased coverage of Jewish-related topics in Irish school textbooks, triggering a high-profile scandal. One textbook calls Auschwitz a “prisoner of war camp;” another refers to Jews as “people who do not love Jesus” and describes Judaism as a religion that permits violence and war.

“Ongoing pro-Palestinian marches, the slogans chanted, and some of the rhetoric used by politicians and sections of the media has left many Jewish people in Ireland feeling uneasy and deeply unsettled. Additionally, antisemitism has been reported in schools and universities, affecting both young children and students. The current atmosphere has been traumatic for some,” Maurice Cohen, Chair of the Jewish Representative Council of Ireland, told The Insider. Irish antisemitism has a historical context, Cohen said. The Irish have traditionally associated themselves with the weaker side in conflicts.

In the past, Irish citizens largely sympathized with the Jews who up until 1948 had fought in Palestine against the British Mandate, just as the Irish themselves had fought for independence. But now the discourse has changed, and it has become increasingly common for them to sympathize with Palestinians resisting “Israeli colonialists.” It is also notable that the Irish Republican Army worked closely with the Palestine Liberation Organization in the 1970s and 1980s.

In fact, experts interviewed by The Insider note that antisemitic sentiment — both in Europe and globally — has been rising for years, and not always in response to Israel's military operations. As the starting point, many name the year 2000, when the peace process between Israel and the Palestinian Authority collapsed and the Second Intifada began.

As Jean-Yves Camus, president of the Observatory of Political Radicalism at the Foundation Jean Jaurès think tank, tells The Insider, in 1999 only 82 antisemitic acts were registered in France. In 2000, the figure rose to 744, and by 2004, it stood at 974. The number then declined, but even during periods of relative calm in the Middle East, it stayed well above its 1990s levels.

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-2021, one of the drivers of this growth was conspiracy theories about a Jewish lobby imposing lockdowns and mass vaccination on the world. Even in the first nine months of 2023, when the Middle East region enjoyed a time of lull and stop-the-spread measures had largely disappeared, countries with large Jewish communities — the United States, France, Britain, and Italy — saw an increase in antisemitic incidents compared to 2022, writes the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University. In other words, the war in Gaza has merely accelerated the spread of a fire that had already been out of control.

Israel as a collective Jew

In an interview with The Atlantic in January 2015, then-French Prime Minister Manuel Valls acknowledged that in addition to the “old” right-wing antisemitism, France was threatened by a “new antisemitism” coming “from the difficult neighborhoods, from immigrants from the Middle East and North Africa, who have turned anger about Gaza into something very dangerous.” Over the past two decades, anti-Jewish hate-crime murders have indeed been committed mostly by members of Muslim communities, researchers interviewed by The Insider confirm.

However, placing all of the blame for the surge of hatred on the far-right and Islamists would be misguided. Another, more sophisticated version of antisemitism has come to the fore, experts say: radical anti-Zionism, which demonizes Israel and denies its right to exist. In the West, the carriers of this ideology include Muslims, but the extreme left also plays a significant role — including members of the cultural and intellectual milieu.

For a long time after World War II, antisemitism was considered a marginal phenomenon, but now it is becoming a normalized element of the political mainstream, argues Carole Nuriel, head of the Middle East branch of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL):

“To be openly antisemitic today is no longer as shameful as it was in the past, and sometimes even bon ton. Much of the reason is that contemporary discourse is more complex: many people classify themselves as 'anti-Zionists,' as if to say, 'No, I don't hate Jews, I only hate Zionists.' But don't be fooled. Anti-Zionism is the same as antisemitism. After all, who are Zionists? Those who believe that the Jewish people have a historical right to this land.”

The Insider's interviewees emphasize that criticism of Israel, its military operations, and its occupation of the West Bank — even criticism in harsh terms — is legitimate and cannot be considered a manifestation of antisemitism. However, calls for the destruction of Israel “as the national home of the Jewish people, including through the false argument that it is an unlawful colonial enterprise, or denying Jewish people their right to self-determination, is antisemitic,” explains Carl Yonker, Senior Researcher at the Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University.

In a similar vein, the slogan “From the River to the Sea, Palestine Will Be Free,” often heard at anti-Israel protests, is not in fact anti-Zionist but antisemitic, the ADL argues. It implies the delegitimization and destruction of Israel as a Jewish state, the expulsion or even the ethnic cleansing of Jews, and the ceding of territory from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea to the Palestinians. Therefore, this slogan contradicts the concept of “two states for two peoples” promoted by the United Nations as a solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The Czech Republic and the German state of Bavaria have banned the slogan “From the River to the Sea” as hate speech, and the Netherlands recognizes it as incitatory.

The narrative that Zionism represents a policy of colonialism, exploitation, and genocide is a product of the Soviet propaganda in the late 1960s. In addition to targeting its domestic audience, the Kremlin regime exported it abroad via numerous channels, including through communist parties in Western countries, explains Ksenia Krimer, a historian of Judaism and the Holocaust at the Leibniz Center for Contemporary History in Potsdam, Germany,

“What is astonishing is the extent to which leftist ideology has absorbed this extremely primitive Soviet anti-Zionist discourse. On one side is the subjectless victim who commits an act of resistance rather than violence, and on the other side is the ruthless Israeli aggressor-occupier, the notorious “Israeli military.” Through this distorted lens, the Middle East conflict overshadows all other conflicts in the world — especially those in which Arabs are the agents of violence and discrimination. The global community does not express a hundredth of the outrage and sympathy for the suffering of the Uighurs in China, the Afghans in Pakistan, the Sudanese, or the Yemenis that it expresses for the Palestinians.”

Today, Israel is “the collective Jew” for antisemites, antisemitism researcher Monika Schwarz-Friesel, a professor at the Technical University of Berlin, told The Insider. The ancient prejudices and myths about Jews “being murderers of children, robbing the land of others, and being destroyers of peoples, all of which have been stereotypes of Jew-hatred for centuries, are projected onto Israel in a contemporary way… It must therefore be expressly emphasized that hatred of Israel was and continues to be articulated even without crises, wars, and the building of settlements… Israel is the salient symbol of Jewish life and survival in the world and it is therefore the thorn in the spirit of all modern antisemites,” Schwarz-Friesel summarizes.

Between the right and the left

Mass protests in support of the Gaza Strip and the anti-Israel rhetoric of extreme left-wing politicians and intellectuals have resulted in a paradoxical situation: many European Jews are willing to support right-wing parties that campaign on promises to fight Islamization.

When asked who is the main threat to French Jews today, Rabbi Shmuel Lubecki of the Rouen synagogue confidently answers: Muslims and left-wing radicals.

“The left is normalizing antisemitic discourse by pretending it's directed against Zionists, not all Jews,” Lubecki told The Insider. “[In the last election] many members of the Jewish community voted for the far-right because they see them as a counterweight to the radical left. The far-right hates Muslims, and this douses the flames of hatred for the Jewish community.”

Sociologists confirm this perception — but only to an extent. According to a CRIF poll, voters of the far-left party La France Insoumise (LFI) and the far-right National Rally are almost equally divided — 55% and 52% — when it comes to negative perceptions of Jews. However, 25% of far-left LFI supporters express sympathy for Hamas, and only 44% consider it a terrorist organization even after the events of October 7. Supporters of Marine Le Pen's far-right party, meanwhile, are far less forgiving of Hamas, with 4% expressing sympathy and 75% calling it a terrorist group. According to CRIF president Yonathan Arfi, “LFI has given antisemitism political legitimacy.”

La France Insoumise is the largest party within the New Popular Front, a left-wing coalition that won last July's snap parliamentary elections. The alliance took home the largest number of mandates but nevertheless did not form part of the ruling coalition. LFI leader Jean-Luc Mélenchon is known not only for his harsh criticism of Israel and its supporters, but also for his openly antisemitic statements.

For example, he called French Jews “an arrogant minority who patronizes everyone” and blamed Jews for the death of Jesus Christ. In October 2023, Mélenchon and his associates refused to condemn the Hamas attack, calling the Palestinian group a “resistance movement” — a characterization that caused a crisis within the parliamentary leftist bloc. One of his party's most prominent lawmakers, Rima Hassan, called the Oct. 7 terrorist attack a “legitimate action” and denied Israel the right to defend itself.

A survey by Fondapol and the AJC found that 92% of French Jews place most of the blame for the rise of domestic antisemitism on LFI, and 57% of the community said they would consider emigration if the LFI candidate wins the next presidential election. “Jews do not seem to have a future in France,” Paris Grand Synagogue Rabbi Moshe Sebbag said after the New Popular Front's victory, advising Jewish youth to leave for Israel.

European right-wing populists are seizing the moment and skillfully playing the Jewish card in their electoral battles — demonstrative concern for Jewish welfare helps them shed their reputation as extremists and xenophobes. A prime example is Dutch anti-Islamist and Euroskeptic Geert Wilders, leader of the Party for Freedom (PVV), which won the country’s November 2023 elections. In its campaign, the PVV emphasized that it considers itself “a great friend of Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East,” and promised to move the Dutch embassy to Jerusalem while closing its diplomatic mission in Ramallah.

National Rally leader Marine Le Pen, who openly condemned the “pogrom in the land of Israel,” insisted in an interview that for French Jews, her party is “the best shield against the threat of Islamic fundamentalism.” Some of her fellow party members even joined a pro-Israel march organized by the local Jewish community. All of this led Israel to end its longstanding boycott of the National Rally (formerly the National Front) and two other European far-right parties — the Sweden Democrats and the Spanish Voice — at the end of February. Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa'ar has ordered the establishment of official contacts with these erstwhile undesirable political forces, believing that their image today is not as radical as it once was. At the end of March, Jordan Bardella, president of the National Rally, is set to visit Israel and to participate in an international conference on combating antisemitism.

“Jewish voters in France for a very long time were pretty much voting like the rest of the population, but with a tendency to be close to the dominant political party,” explains Sébastien Mosbah-Natanson, Associate Professor in Sociology. “Jewish voters were very reluctant, of course, to choose the extreme right. But now things are changing. Right-wing parties and even the extreme-right of Marine Le Pen have been much more clear in their support of the Jews and Israel.”

In some districts with large Jewish populations, National Rally candidates did indeed receive noticeably more votes this past July than in the previous election.

However, a significant portion of French Jews still find voting for the far-right unacceptable. Despite its efforts, Marine Le Pen's party failed to totally reset its reputation: the National Front once had many neo-Nazis in its ranks, and its founder, Jean-Marie Le Pen, was repeatedly tried for inciting hatred and denying the scale of the Holocaust.

As scholar of political radicalism Jean-Yves Camus notes, some Jewish voters chose to support the writer Éric Zemmour, who comes from a family of Algerian Jews, in the July elections. His Reconquête party also gravitates toward extreme right-wing ideology but has less baggage than the National Rally.

There are other “buts” as well. Many French Jews doubt Marine Le Pen's governance talents due to her inexperience and her disdain for free-market principles, Camus adds. In addition, for Orthodox Jews, who place a great emphasis on traditions, the freedom to slaughter livestock in line with Kosher laws and to demonstrate other aspects of religious identity is key. If Le Pen intends to ban halal meat and the hijab, there is no guarantee she will stop there, Camus continues. He estimates that in the 2027 presidential election, a decent percentage of the Jewish vote could go to Bruno Retailleau, the current interior minister and a hardliner when it comes to migration policies.

Following the trend, the right-wing Alternative for Germany (AfD) also declares support for Israel. “We condemn the [Hamas] terrorist attack in the strongest possible terms. We stand in full solidarity with Israel and the Jewish people,” the AfD parliamentary group stated on Oct. 7, 2023. The party had previously demanded a total ban on the activities of BDS (Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions), a nonviolent pro-Palestinian movement calling for sanctions and economic pressure on Israel.

This represents a stark departure from the party’s past. The AfD’s antisemitic history includes belittling the Holocaust and furthering the spread of stereotypes and conspiracy theories. For example, its co-founder, Alexander Gauland, called Hitler and the Nazis “just a drop of bird shit” against the backdrop of Germany's glorious thousand-year history and said that Germans should be proud of the “achievements” of their soldiers in two world wars.

“Party members have repeatedly questioned the necessity of educational tours to concentration camp museums for schoolchildren and called for an end to incessant mourning and rumination of guilt. In other words, they are explicitly calling for the destruction of the consensus that has developed in German society around the memory of National Socialism and the Holocaust,” the Leibniz Center’s Krimer says. “Elon Musk repeated all this to them at the party congress. Noticeably, the idea wasn't his — he just mirrored what had been said many times by AfD members and supporters.”

It is only appropriate that the Israeli authorities have not yet seen fit to remove the AfD from their blacklist. German Jews have little faith in the right-wing rhetoric either. A few years ago, former AfD head Frauke Petry claimed that her party served as a guarantor of preserving Germany's Jewish community because it opposes Muslim immigration. The Central Council of Jews in Germany responded with a denunciation, calling the AfD a “racist and antisemitic party” that “sows hatred, divides society, engages in incitement, and attacks democracy on a daily basis.”

On the eve of February's early elections to the Bundestag, the Central Council once again made its position clear. The head of the council, Josef Schuster, penned a letter to 103 Jewish communities in Germany warning them against voting for either of the country’s two radical parties — the AfD and the extreme left-wing Sahra Wagenknecht Alliance (BSW). “Extreme-right antisemites and radical enemies of Israel and Ukraine on the left find shelter in the AfD and BSW... It is obvious to the Central Council of Jews in Germany that these parties do not want to contribute to the welfare of our society,” Schuster warned.

Antisemitism has spread across the political spectrum, and not one political force has a monopoly on it, experts interviewed by The Insider conclude. The situation in which European Jews find themselves today is best described by Sigmount Königsber, the antisemitism commissioner for Berlin's Jewish Community:

“We are attacked by friends of Hamas; we are attacked by the extreme left, the so-called anti-imperialists; we are attacked by Islamists; we are attacked by the extreme right. Political groups that would normally be mortal enemies are uniting in antisemitism — with a zeal we've never seen before.”