Violent anti-Semitic attacks killed more Jews in 2025 than at any time in 30 years, according to a new annual report compiling incidents from around the world.
According to the report, 20 Jews were killed during the year in four different anti-Semitic attacks, including the Hanukkah attack in Sydney, Australia, in which 15 members of the Jewish community were killed.
The total number of anti-Semitic incidents in Western countries remains significantly higher than in 2022, the year before the Gaza war began, according to a Tel Aviv University report. Last year, a US-brokered ceasefire took effect in October to end the two-year war in Gaza, which also sparked a 12-day war between Israel and Iran in June.
The report found that anti-Semitic incidents increased in New York and the UK after the end of the Gaza war. In Britain, two people were killed in a car ramming and stabbing attack on the Jewish calendar’s holiest day, and the total number of anti-Semitic incidents rose from 3,556 in 2024 to 3,700 a year later.
In the United States, two Israeli embassy employees were shot dead outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. The following month, a man used a flamethrower and Molotov cocktail to attack a demonstration of Israeli hostages in Gaza, Colorado.
“High levels of anti-Semitism are common in societies with large Jewish minorities,” the report’s authors wrote. In France, which has the third-largest Jewish population in the world after Israel and the United States, the total number of incidents fell slightly from 1,570 in 2024 to 1,320 the following year. However, incidents involving physical violence increased from 106 to 126 over the same period, according to the report.
In Germany, which takes the issue of anti-Semitism very seriously due to its Nazi past, the number of incidents has decreased to 5,729 in 2025 compared to 6,560 the previous year. However, both numbers have increased dramatically compared to the number of anti-Semitic incidents before the start of the Gaza war. In 2022, Germany had far fewer incidents: 2,811.
The Israeli government also faced harsh criticism for what the report said was a failure to effectively address anti-Semitism, which should be a unifying position across the country’s political spectrum.
Rather, the report concludes, attempts to expand the definition of anti-Semitism have robbed the word of its meaning. The country’s politicians, in collaboration with Israeli media, “continue to widen the scope of what is considered anti-Semitism, sometimes in absurd or hasty ways.”
Israel has frequently sought to portray criticism of its policies as rooted in anti-Semitism. The result, the report says, would be to “politicize important battles and discredit them by rendering them of no analytical significance.”
“The label of anti-Semitism is a harsh one and should only be applied after careful consideration and on the basis of solid criteria,” the report said.
The report found that one of the most worrying trends this year is the normalization of anti-Semitic rhetoric in American politics, including by supporters of President Donald Trump. The report praised Trump’s efforts to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, conclude the Abraham Accords and destroy Iran’s nuclear program, but warned that the US president was tolerating a party riven by anti-Semitism and conspiracy theories “as no modern president has done”.
In response, the White House rejected accusations that it condoned anti-Semitism. “Jewish Americans have no greater friend than the Trump administration. Anti-Semitism has no place in America, and under President Trump’s leadership, those who break the law and unlawfully discriminate against or inflict violence on others will be held accountable,” White House press secretary Olivia Wales said.
Christopher Browning, an American historian and Holocaust expert quoted in the report, said the rise in anti-Semitism against the political right in the United States is not surprising. “Historically, when you mix conspiracy theories, racism, and authoritarianism, you almost always end up with anti-Semitism,” Browning said in the report.
