The Global Surge in Jew-Hatred: Why Now?
On October 7, as the Hamas massacre became clear, anti-Israel activists began celebrating the slaughter of innocents. Panelists at one Harvard University academic event, on October 23, mentioned the words ״settler colonial״ three times, ״apartheid״ four times, ״genocide״ thirteen times, without ever mentioning the word ״hostage.״ On many campuses, in many world capitals, protesters romanticized the marauding Gazans׳ perverse crimes as ״resistance,״ with some even claiming ״rape is resistance.״
Had protests begun after Israel invaded Gaza on October 27, demonstrators could claim they objected to what Israel does. But those who cheered and felt ״exhilarated״ by the slaughter, who boasted ״this is what decolonization looks like,״ who denied Hamas׳s perversions yet claimed Israelis deserved it, objected to that Israel is – and that Jews are. The Palestinian war cries that day resonating from the Gaza corridor and echoed globally were ״Itbach al-Yahud ״ – slaughter the Jew, not ״just״ Israelis.
The hatred fueling Hamas terrorists and the rampaging Gazans that day transcended any solvable political issues or border clashes. It wasn׳t about a two-state solution but a desire for a no-Jewish-state solution, destroying Zionism.
The subsequent global obsession exaggerated Israel׳s supposed crimes, disproportionately emphasizing this conflict as the keystone to all the world׳s problems. Some were shocked by the venom. Bari Weiss of the Free Press reported that many Jews had believed – what most Americans still believe – that they were living ״outside of history״ – and were ״immune to it.״ But Professor Irwin Cotler, the human rights lawyer who served as Canada׳s attorney general and justice minister, insisted that this surge didn׳t start on October 7. Instead: ״We are witnessing the culmination of years of mainstreaming and legitimization of antisemitism across the campus, popular, media, and political cultures – with Jews now being attacked in the streets, in their neighborhoods, at their schools, in their offices, and at their synagogues, and where synagogues are firebombed, Jewish community centers are attacked, and Holocaust memorials are vandalized.״
Indeed, in July 2024, the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights reported that ״96% of Jews told us they had faced antisemitism in the last year and 80% feel that it has been getting worse in recent years.״ Half of the Jews surveyed ״worry about their safety and the safety of their family, and over 70% even hide their Jewish identity occasionally. The rapid proliferation of antisemitic content online is another worrying trend.״ These surveys were completed before October 7.
The Stunned Versus the World Weary: How Central Is Jew-hatred to Jewish history?
For some Jews, October 7 was a turning point. Watching Palestinian killers delight in brutalizing ״the Jews״ was terrifying. Seeing their own neighbors and schoolmates celebrate the evil perpetrated thousands of miles away was a rude awakening. Some feared that the ״Golden Age״ of Diaspora Jewry had ended. Most American, Canadian, and Australian Jews, especially, believed their countries were different, inherently tolerant – and that the world had learned the lessons of Auschwitz. Indeed, many North Americans grew up without the constant, grating, threatening Jew-hatred their grandparents faced in Europe, the Middle East, North Africa.
Others, however, saw October 7 as another sad milestone in a long trail of Jew-hatred. To them, it is programmed into Western civilization, let alone the Islamic world. And, like Professor Cotler, they had been watching it grow. ״Anti-Judaism should not be understood as some archaic or irrational closet in the vast edifices of Western thought,״ David Nirenberg wrote in Anti-Judaism: The Western Tradition. ״It was rather one of the basic tools with which that edifice was constructed.״ This need to build a worldview in contrast to the Jew confirmed Jean-Paul Sartre׳s insight that ״if the Jew did not exist, the antisemite would invent him.״
Nirenberg concluded sadly, in 2013, ״We live in an age in which millions of people are exposed daily to some variant of the argument that the challenges of the world they live in are best explained in terms of ‘Israel,׳״ the Jew of the world.
In short, while equally appalled by the bigotry, these world-weary observers see the continuity in a chain of hostility reaching back to ancient times.
The Stunned and the World-Weary each grasped different truths. The history of North American antisemitism is milder than Pagan, European, or Islamist Jew-hatred. And 2025 is neither 1942 nor 1492. Antisemitism has waxed and waned, mutating, finding traction in different ways. Yet, there was something so familiar, medieval, Hitlerian, in Hamas׳s barbarous Jew-hatred and the subsequent celebrations.
In the West today, Jew-hatred takes on different forms, from right to left, often among natural enemies too. Right-wing extremists cross-pollinated antisemitism with White Supremacy and ultra-nationalist populism. Left-wing extremists and Islamist fundamentalists merge support for Palestinians with hatred of THE Jews, sometimes masquerading the bigotry with professorial theorizing and human rights talk. Upper-class anti-Semites snobbishly dismiss Jews as greedy up-starts whose unpopularity justifies the hatred, while lower-class thugs sometimes use the current hostility to Israel and Jews to declare open season on Jews just shopping or walking home from synagogue.
The scope and diversity of the attackers sharpens the real mystery: Why now, why so virulent, and why in America and Canada, Australia, and England, after decades of seeming quiet? How could it be that Jews, only 2.4% of America׳s population, endure 15% of all hate crimes, and 68% of religion-based hate crimes?
Steps to the Surge
In the late 1940s, as the world emerged from the Nazi maelstrom, most reasonable people assumed that never again would such evil Jew-hatred spread, and never again would the world stand by silently. Israel׳s founding in 1948 seemed to embody that promise. Yet, over the last 50 years, yesterday׳s antisemitism has been updated, weaponized, and freshly popularized. Consider just 15 steps along the way, whereby shifts on the left and the right, among Islamists and academics, in technology, politics, culture, and ideology, created this antisemitic firestorm – before October 7.
1975: While passing the Zionism is Racism resolution, the UN General Assembly establishes the Committee on the Exercise of the Inalienable Rights of the Palestinian People. These initiatives demonize Zionism and Israel, and popularize the false analogy comparing Zionism to South African Apartheid. The resolutions put Israel under permanent investigation, singling out the Palestinian cause for ongoing special treatment at the UN and throughout the international system.
1987: Attacking Stanford University׳s required Western Civilization course, activists shout: ״Hey hey, ho ho, Western culture׳s got to go.״ Building on 1960s identity politics and other ״postmodern״ trends, progressives, especially on campus, start deprecating America, the West, ״whiteness,״ traditional liberalism, the scholarly ideal of objectivity, and, inevitably, Zionism, treating it as the ultimate expression of each harmful phenomenon. In fairness, each progressive idea, from improving diversity to greater inclusivity and sensitivity, is based on a commendable value, but academic fanatics go all accelerator and no brakes, imposing orthodoxies rather than broadening perspectives.
1991: When the Soviet Union collapses, the left replaces Marxism with Palestinianism as its glue. Jihadists feel emboldened, claiming the Soviets׳ failed Afghanistan war weakened communism. The path to an Oslo Peace Process also opens – ultimately helping Yasir Arafat reengineer his image from the grandfather of modern terrorism to Palestinians׳ Nobel-Peace-Prize-winning peacemaker.
1994: Hezbollah׳s bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina, kills 85 and injures hundreds. The targeting of Jews thousands of miles from Israel, by Hezbollah terrorists using Iran׳s diplomatic facilities, reinforced the antisemitic anti-Zionism of jihadis. They׳re focused on destruction – using the Jew and the Jewish state as convenient scapegoats.
1995: The Stormfront website, spewing White nationalist, antisemitic, and racist bile, becomes the first leading website spreading hate. Marginalized since the Holocaust and the Civil Rights Movement, bigots start connecting virtually, encouraging each other, and expanding the reach of their recruitment. Their growing momentum disproves the internet manifestos promising an ethical and substantive digital politics free of demagoguery and hate.
2001: The UN׳s World Conference against Racism in Durban ends on September 7, after becoming an anti-Zionist, antisemitic hatefest that resurrected ״Zionism is Racism.״ Four days later, Jihadi terrorists kill 2,977 innocents on 9/11. A year into the ״Second Intifada,״ Yasir Arafat׳s terrorist war against the Oslo peace process, with Jew-hatred spiking worldwide, Westerners belatedly notice that the age of global jihadi terrorism has begun.
2005: On August 15, Israel starts its Gaza Disengagement, withdrawing from every inch of the Gaza Strip, hoping for peace. Ironically, one month earlier, more than 170 Palestinian civil society organizations launched the BDS – Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions – movement, disengaging from any normal interactions with Israelis. BDS ״anti-normalization״ makes the conflict more essentialist, existential, and less solvable. Kassam rockets continue flying from Gaza.
2007: Hamas, the Islamist fundamentalist movement vowing to destroy Israel, seizes control of the Gaza Strip in a violent coup against the Palestinian Authority (PA). Genocidal antisemitism and anti-Zionism become mainstreamed worldwide, as Israelis start losing faith in ״land for peace״ exchanges.
2009: Iran׳s President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad appears at the UN׳s follow-up to the Durban anti-racism conference that April. Calling Zionists ״racist perpetrators of genocide,״ Ahmadinejad calls attention to his own Holocaust-denying, antisemitic, anti-Zionist threats to destroy Israel, as Iranian scientists work to develop nuclear weapons.
2015: The murders in Paris of 12 at the Charlie Hebdo satirical journal and four at the Hypercacher kosher supermarket illustrate in lethal terms the reach of antisemitism and Jihadism throughout the West, especially in Europe׳s growing, alienated, Muslim communities.
2017: Chicago Dyke March organizers ban lesbians carrying Jewish Pride flags from their July 13 march, because their Zionism ״made people feel unsafe,״ further blurring anti-Zionism with antisemitism. The accusation that Israel is ״pinkwashing״ grows, implying Israel respects LGBTQ+ rights at home to score propaganda points abroad. In progressive and academic circles, an influential ״woke״ ideology pursues ״social justice,״ defined in a particular way, emphasizing being ״safe״ and ״unsafe,״ ״microaggressions and macroaggressions,״ ״triggering״ and ״intersectionality.״ Yet as ״microaggressions״ including looking at students the wrong way derail some professors׳ careers, Jews and Zionists are ״blocked at the intersection.״ Many Jews experience ״macroaggressions״ – attacks – because with their ״white privilege,״ their trauma from antisemitism over millennia is discounted.
2017: One month later, proving antisemitism׳s plasticity from left to right, hundreds of White nationalists march in the ״Unite the Right״ rally in Charlottesville, Virginia. They shout, ״Jews will not replace us,״ and ״the Jewish media is going down.״ During Donald Trump׳s polarizing presidency, left-wing Jews keep fighting the growing antisemitism on the right, as right-wing Jews fight the left׳s antisemitism on campus, especially. Making Jew-hatred another partisan flashpoint undermines the fight on all fronts.
2018: On October 27, a lone gunman riled up by right-wing online hate murders eleven Jews worshipping in Pittsburgh׳s Tree of Life-Or L׳Simcha synagogue. Appalled, most Americans denounce this deranged assassin, without addressing the deeper forces hopping up such extremists.
2020: The murder of George Floyd in Minnesota encourages a ״racial reckoning״ throughout the West. But even as many American Jews support the protests, the Floyd moment popularizes assaults on America as ״systemically racist,״ Jews as having ״white privilege,״ and Zionism as racist. Black Lives Matter and Palestinian activists shout ״From Minneapolis to Palestine, the struggle for liberation continues.״
2021: As Hamas bombs Israel in May, antisemitism surges worldwide. Gangs of Palestinians harass Jews from New York to Los Angeles. Thugs in London yell ״Fuck the Jews, we׳ll rape your daughters.״ ״Algorithmic antisemitism״ soars as over 17,000 Tweets in one week agree: ״Hitler was right.״ TikTok, whose popularity surged during the COVID pandemic, becomes a massive conveyor of anti-Israel and antisemitic sentiment, as Israel becomes the most targeted country on social media. Anti-Zionism becomes even more central to ״woke״ university culture, as thousands of professors sign petitions vowing to boycott Israel because ״the critical theory we generate in our literature and in our classrooms must be backed in deed.״
On October 7, 2023, many in the red-green alliance, uniting radical progressives and Islamists celebrated Hamas׳s mass murders. Hate breeds more hate. As antisemitism from the left and Islamists surged, right-wing haters felt emboldened too by their natural enemies׳ anti-Jewish enmity. Still, most Westerners denounced antisemitism and condemned its spread. In 2024, an American Jewish Congress poll found 72% of American adults recognizing antisemitism as a problem, with 59% noting the increase since 2019. Nevertheless, 77% of American Jews reported feeling less safe in America among their fellow citizens.
Spread on campuses, in Palestinian schoolrooms, in mosques, and online, these anti-Zionist lies fuel a worldwide movement. By maligning the Jewish state so obsessively, aggressively, anti-Zionists used antisemitism to justify their anti-Israel sentiment. These libels, these Jew-hating acts, this antisemitic anti-Zionism, make the Israeli-Palestinian conflict zero-sum, posing major obstacles to peace.