Global rise in anti-Semitism leaves Jewish community isolated, rabbi says world at ‘tipping point’

The escalation of anti-Semitism after the Hamas terrorist massacre in Israel on October 7, 2023, it paved the way for attacks on Jewish communities around the world. During the past year, schools, community centers and places of worship faced threats, intimidation and physical violence.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, told Fox News Digital that during 2024, the “level of assumed security” that the American Jewish community lived with had changed. “It’s hard, when you have a place you call home and suddenly it doesn’t feel like home anymore.” With an environment of “rolling anti-Semitism” in the US becoming “an accepted part of everyday life”, Hauer said the issue “is still seen as a problem for Jews, not a stain on society”.

The suddenness of the change was striking, Hauer said. “It was like we were the source of the darkness,” he explained. All those with whom we stood shoulder to shoulder to fight for their needs and to fight for their rights suddenly do not recognize us, so that is worrying.

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The Anti-Defamation League tallied more than 10,000 anti-Semitic incidents between October 7, 2023 and October 6, 2024, up from 3,325 the previous year and the highest annual total the group has tallied. They include more than 8,000 incidents of harassment, 150 physical assaults and 1,840 acts of vandalism. Combined, more than half of these incidents occurred at anti-Israel rallies (over 3,000) or at Jewish institutions (over 2,000).

Some politicians and the United Nations (UN) have fueled domestic anti-Israeli hatred. In January, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza without calling for Hamas to disarm, drawing widespread condemnation from Jewish community leaders.

Despite numerous US officials and the State Department condemning her spread of anti-Semitism, UN Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories Francesca Albanese visited a number of US campuses in October as she presented her latest report to the UN General Assembly. During a visit to Barnard College, Albanese “described Israel’s war in Gaza as ‘genocide,’ justified the October 7 attack and questioned Israel’s right to exist.” the Times of Israel reported.

The hatred that permeated college campuses took a new form when anti-Israel camps sprung up in educational institutions across the country during the spring. During some campus protests, Jewish students were excluded from their own campus.

Terrorist flags fly on American streets and campuses during anti-Israel protests. School administrators and business leaders who angered anti-Israel protesters were tagged in their homes and institutions with an inverted red triangle used by Hamas to designate military targets. In July, protesters replaced the American flag with a Palestinian flag in Washington, DC, and wrote “Hamas is coming” on a statue of Christopher Columbus.

In September, Canadian and American authorities foiled an ISIS-inspired attack on a Jewish community. On October 26, a Mauritanian national who entered the country illegally in March 2023 shot and killed a Jewish worshiper in Chicago before exchanging gunfire with responding police and paramedics. Chicago officials waited five days before confirming the religious identity of the suspect’s target and noted that the shooter was intentionally targeting the Jewish community.

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Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney and founder of The Lawfare Project, spoke about the climate of intolerance fueled, telling Fox News Digital that “President Biden and mostly Democratic leaders in big cities across the country have failed to act to reduce Jew-hatred because it’s politically inconvenient for them to enforce the civil rights of American Jews and to ensure public safety.”

She said that “for years the progressive left has ignored the hatred of Jews coming from within their own ranks, choosing to ignore the reality that the Jewish people are a minority people who still need legal protection against Marxist-oriented and Islamist-inspired attacks on their identity, an indigenous right to their ancestral homeland and their ability to enjoy equal protection under the law.Their politicians downplay their Jewish identity to avoid being called out for their hypocrisy regarding their support for social justice. for all people – except Jews – and even to avoid prosecuting attacks on Jews as hate crimes, especially when the attackers are members of other minority communities.”

Hatred around the world

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and director of global social action at the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Fox News Digital that he believes the world is “at a tipping point” when it comes to anti-Semitic intolerance. With popular social media influencers “normalizing” hatred of Israel, national leaders around the world escalating anti-Israel rhetoric and extremists who don’t “feel like they’re going to be held accountable” when they target the Jewish community, Rabbi Cooper explained it’s “a perfect storm .”

In Europeincidents of anti-Semitic hatred rose as much as 800% in Sweden between 2022 and 2023. Jews across Europe reported that they no longer wore items that could identify their religion and sometimes changed their names to avoid being targeted. France reported 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 an increase in anti-Semitic hatred and Jewish self-censorship. Israel announced in December that it would close its embassy in the country, citing statements from Irish leaders.delegitimization and demonization Jewish state.”

The United Kingdom has also seen a large increase in anti-Semitic hatred, s Community Safety Foundation reporting a record 1,978 anti-Semitic incidents in the first half of 2024. This includes a 246% increase in “damage and desecration of Jewish property” between the first six months of 2023 and the first six months of 2024. Israel’s minister for diaspora affairs and combating anti-Semitism said in March that because of its pro-Hamas atmosphere, London has become “the most anti-Semitic city” in the world.

In late November, a bus carrying Jewish school children was attacked with stones after protesters harassed those on the bus. A few days earlier, a man threw bottles at a group of Jewish teenagers, hitting and hospitalizing one of his targets.

The headlines about hatred of the Jewish community abroad were chilling. 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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More than nine synagogues around the world have been targeted by arson attacks since Oct. 7, according to a social media post by Hen Mazzig, a senior fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute. The latest attack took place on December 18 in Montreal at a synagogue that was also the target of an attack in November 2023, the New York Post reported. Just two days later, gunfire rang out overnight at a Jewish elementary school in Toronto. It was the third shooting at the school since May, writes the Times of Israel.

Another recent arson incident occurred at a synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, on December 6. The Simon Wiesenthal Center responded to the incident by issuing a travel advisory to Australia, explaining that the country’s leaders did not oppose “persistent demonization, harassment, and violence against Jews and Jewish institutions.”

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 followed and attacked in the city. The incident sparked another attempt to “hunt Jews” in Antwerp and attacks on Berlin’s youth soccer team.

When Cooper’s group issued a travel warning in the Netherlands, he told Fox News Digital that “theoretically, you could put a travel warning almost anywhere in Western Europe.”

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In the US, with anti-Jewish intolerance infiltrating elite universities, workplaces, the medical community and the entertainment industry, Rabbi Cooper summed up that “the challenges ahead are going to be quite daunting.” He also noted that he has hope because of the resilience of the Jewish community and the security provided by American democracy.

Cooper said many of President Trump’s incoming administration appointees, including incoming U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Elise Stefanik, are “defenders of our community.” Once the new policies are implemented, he said he believes “a lot of good things can happen very, very quickly.”