Growing up Jewish in 1980s New York, I started learning about the Holocaust in kindergarten. But along with those loaded lessons came constant reassurances from Jewish day school teachers and communal leaders that it would happen “never again.” With the help of the global community, it seemed Jews had finally triumphed over the repeated horrors of Jewish history. That was a comforting message for children. Now, though, it looks like wishful thinking.
History will likely frame the early twenty-first century as a hinge moment. After the Holocaust, overt anti-Semitism was stigmatized by democratic societies worldwide. Jews were optimistic that this represented a permanent, positive change. However, October 7 and its aftermath have proven otherwise. For global Jewry, this means confronting ugly truths, like the durability of Jew-hatred. But reality is quickly shifting around our non-Jewish neighbors, too.
While France has already seen anti-Semitic murders this century, the oldest hatred is intensifying elsewhere. Segments of the Anglosphere—led primarily by leftists and Islamists—are working to expel Jews from polite society. Vandalism, harassment, discrimination, assaults, and attacks targeting Jews and Jewish institutions have surged, transcending national borders.
In the United States, for example, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 8,873 anti-Semitic incidents last year—a 140 percent increase from the number of incidents in 2022, and the highest number on record since ADL began tracking anti-Semitism in 1979. Of those incidents, 5,204 occurred after Hamas’ incursion into Israel.
Activists interrupted comedian Chelsea Handler’s show, labeling her a “genocide supporter.” Public pressure campaigns have canceled events for Stranger Things actor Brett Gelman, comedian Michael Rapaport, and singer Matisyahu, who are all Jewish. Half of a Seattle museum’s staff walked out to protest the inclusion of anti-Semitism in a “hate” exhibit. And Jewish singles encounter hostility on dating apps.
In Manhattan, Jewish businesses were vandalized on the Upper West and East Sides. A Chasidic child was assaulted in Brooklyn. At a municipal meeting in San Francisco, a keffiyeh-clad man pointed at gathered Jews and said, “Palestinian kids, children, have been murdered by people like this, right here.” Protesters in upstate New York were cheered for yelling at Jewish children that their parents are “baby killers.” Children marched in St. Louis, chanting, “Zionism has got to go!” And activists pressured universities to banish the Jewish organizations Hillel and Chabad from campus.
In Canada, B’nai B’rith documented 5,791 anti-Semitic incidents last year, seventy-seven of which were violent. A teenager was arrested for plotting to attack Jews, and a Jewish-Israeli teen was assaulted by another student. Jewish schools have been shot at in Montreal and Toronto. A synagogue’s windows were broken twice in one month. A Jewish-owned deli was graffitied and set ablaze. Another owner of a vandalized deli was told there was a two-day wait for graffiti removal, “because there’s so much of it everywhere.” A tattoo parlor canceled an event for breast cancer survivors with a Jewish organizer. Jewish doctors were targeted online.
In the United Kingdom, the Community Security Trust catalogued 4,103 anti-Semitic incidents last year, a 147 percent increase from 2022’s total and “the highest annual total ever reported to CST.” At Soho Theatre in London, the former site of a synagogue, a comedian hounded an Israeli audience member out of the theater mid-show when he “refused to applaud a Palestinian flag.” A police officer threatened to arrest a visibly Jewish man walking by London’s anti-Israel protest one Shabbat. (The department later apologized, stating: “Being Jewish is not a provocation.”) An arts festival dropped a sponsor over Israel ties. Rumors that Aaron Taylor-Johnson, a British Jew, would be the next James Bond prompted boycott calls. Stephen Pollard, editor-at-large of the Jewish Chronicle, noticed that after October 7, dating profiles began to specify “No Zionists.” The National Union of Students voted to “stop recognising” the Union of Jewish Students.
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry logged 662 anti-Semitic incidents in October–November 2023, only five of which predated October 7. This marked a 738 percent increase compared to October–November 2022. Australian news falsely accused a Jewish man of stabbing people at the Westfield Bondi Junction mall in Sydney, killing six. Anti-Israel activists pressured a mental health conference to cancel an Israeli doctor's keynote address and separately released the personal information of around six hundred Jewish creatives and academics.
South Africa saw a 631 percent increase of anti-Semitic incidents in October–December 2023 compared to that period the year prior. Two Jewish cemeteries were vandalized. South Africa’s president used a meeting with local Jews—ostensibly about rising anti-Semitism—to charge Israel with genocide. The meeting was cited in South Africa’s complaint to the International Court of Justice as evidence that “Israel had been made fully aware of the grave concerns expressed by . . . South Africa,” implying that the South African Jews present at the meeting aren’t really South African. The Jewish editor of the South African Medical Journal was also ousted after rejecting the equivalence of Hamas’ attack and Israel’s response.
The Anglosphere’s democracies have long been admired as moral beacons, but nations must believe in their own goodness and ideally have leaders that promote it. The feeble responses to post-October 7 law-breaking spotlighted that societal self-loathing has weakened the West from within. Anti-Semitic incidents are not isolated one-offs. Rather, a deliberate, negative pattern is forming.
Surging anti-Semitism signals societal decay, including increasing intolerance for religious minorities and ideological dissenters. This threatens the West as we know it. Societies that don’t stigmatize anti-Semitism face festering problems, as real solutions are displaced by scapegoating Jews. And while those actively stigmatizing Jews across the Anglosphere may still be a minority, their actions will have an outsized impact without a tidal wave of active opposition, like that modeled by the Coalition of Catholics against Antisemitism.
It's time for decent people everywhere to join the opposition. The stakes are high, and the future of the West hangs in the balance.
Melissa Langsam Braunstein (@slowhoneybee) is an independent writer in metro Washington.
Image by DGtal, licensed via Creative Commons. Image cropped.
