Antisemitic violence worldwide in 2025 killed highest number of Jews in 30 years, study finds

By Oren Liebermann, CNN

(CNN) — Violent antisemitic attacks in 2025 killed the highest number of Jews in 30 years, according to a new annual report collecting incidents around the world.

Throughout the year, 20 Jews were murdered in four different antisemitic attacks, including the Hanukkah attack in Sydney, Australia, in which 15 members of the Jewish community were killed, the report said.

According to the report from Tel Aviv University, the total number of antisemitic incidents in every Western country remained significantly higher than in 2022, the year before the Gaza war began. Last year saw a US-brokered ceasefire take effect in October that attempted to end two years of war in Gaza, while a 12-day war also erupted between Israel and Iran in June.

In New York and the United Kingdom, the report found that the end of the Gaza war was counter-intuitively followed by an increase in the number of antisemitic incidents. In the UK, where two people were killed in a car ramming and stabbing attack on the holiest day of the Jewish year, the total number of antisemitic incidents increased from 3,556 in 2024 to 3,700 one year later.

In the United States, two staff members of the Israeli embassy were killed in a shooting attack outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC. The following month, a man used a flamethrower and Molotov cocktail to attack a demonstration for Israeli hostages held in Gaza in Colorado.

“High levels of antisemitism have become a normalized feature in societies with large Jewish minorities,” the report’s authors wrote. In France, which has the third-highest Jewish population in the world behind Israel and the US, the total number of incidents fell slightly, from 1,570 in 2024 to 1,320 the following year. But the report found that incidents involving physical violence rose over the same period, from 106 to 126.

Germany, which treats the issue of antisemitism very seriously because of its Nazi past, saw a decrease in the number of incidents – 5,729 in 2025 compared to 6,560 the previous year. But both figures are a dramatic increase over the number of antisemitic incidents before the start of the Gaza war. In 2022, Germany experienced a far lower amount – 2,811 incidents.

Israel’s government also faced harsh criticism for what the report described as a failure to effectively address antisemitism, which should be a unifying position across the country’s political spectrum.

Instead, attempts to broaden the definition of antisemitism have, the report concluded, robbed the word of meaning. The country’s politicians, together with Israeli media, have “continuously expanded the scope of what qualifies as antisemitism, at times in absurd or hasty ways.”

Israel has frequently tried to paint criticism of its policies as rooted in antisemitism. The result, according to the report, is to “discredit a crucial fight by politicizing it and emptying it of analytic meaning.”

“The label of antisemitism is harsh and should be applied only after careful consideration and based on solid criteria,” the report said.

The report found that one of the most worrying trends of the year was the normalization of antisemitic rhetoric in American politics, including among supporters of President Donald Trump. Though praising Trump for recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, launching the Abraham Accords, and the efforts to destroy Iran’s nuclear program, the report warned that the US president has tolerated “as no contemporary president has” a political party riven by antisemitism and conspiracy theories.

In response the White House rejected accusations of tolerating antisemitism. “There is no greater friend to Jewish Americans than the Trump Administration. Antisemitism has absolutely no place in the United States, and, under President Trump’s leadership, those who break the law and illegally discriminate against or inflict violence upon others will be held accountable,” said White House spokeswoman Olivia Wales.

Christopher Browning, a US historian and expert on the Holocaust quoted in the report, said the rise of antisemitism on the political right in the US was no surprise. “Historically, when you mix conspiracy theory, racism, and authoritarianism, you almost always get to antisemitism,” Browning said in the report.

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