Report shows sharp rise in antisemitic violence in the West in 2025, 20 killed in 4 attacks

Tel Aviv University’s Annual Antisemitism Report 2025 documents a dramatic rise in anti-Jewish violence across the West in 2025. Twenty Jews were reportedly murdered in four separate terrorist attacks on three continents, the highest number in three decades.

Prof. Uriya Shavit, editor of the 152-page report, expressed concern that antisemitism is increasingly being normalized in much of the Western world.

“The data raise concern that a high level of antisemitic incidents is becoming a normalized reality. The peak in the number of incidents was recorded in the immediate aftermath of the October 7 attack, after which we began to see a downward trend – but unfortunately, that trend did not continue in 2025. The steep increase in the number of cases of severe violence is not surprising. The rule that applies to all types of crime applies here as well: when law-enforcement authorities are indifferent to small crimes, the result is big crimes,” Shavit stated.

The report revealed that Australia and Canada registered the highest-ever number of anti-Jewish incidents. Some 6,800 antisemitic incidents were registered in Canada in 2025 compared to 6,219 in 2024. Australia registered 1,750 anti-Jewish incidents in 2025 compared to 1,727 in 2024. 

In December 2025, two attackers killed 15 people at a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach in Australia. It was the most deadly antisemitic attack since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and one of the most severe antisemitic attacks in the diaspora in recent decades. The attack took place two months after a U.S.-brokered ceasefire in Gaza.

Physical attacks against Jews also increased in the United Kingdom and in New York, the city with the largest number of Jews outside Israel. 

The United Kingdom also experienced a rise in antisemitism despite the Gaza ceasefire. In October 2025, Jihad al-Shamie, an Islamist terrorist of Syrian descent, murdered two Jews at a Manchester synagogue. 

France, home to the world’s third-largest Jewish community, experienced a slight decline in overall antisemitic incidents in 2025. However, the number of physical attacks against Jews in France increased from 106 in 2024 to 126 in 2025.

The authors of the report also criticized the current Israeli government for failing to combat the rise of global antisemitism. The report authors argued: “The government did not carry out even a single significant and effective action, and often caused harm. Israeli politicians at the highest levels steadily expanded the scope of the term ‘antisemitism,’ including through cynical and hasty declarations, drained it of meaning, and damaged the struggle against Jew-hatred.”

A former Canadian justice minister, Prof. Irwin Cotler, raised concerns about the growing levels of antisemitic incidents worldwide. 

“We are witnessing not only an unprecedented global explosion in incidents of antisemitism since audits began in the 1970s, but most disturbingly, an unprecedented explosion of hate crimes targeting Jews, where, for example, Canadian Jews who are 1% of the country’s population, are the target of 72% of reported hate crimes and are 25 times more likely to be targeted than any other minority group.”

Dr. Carl Yonker led the research on antisemitic attacks and prosecutions of the perpetrators in the United States, France, Canada, and the United Kingdom between 2020 and 2025.

“The study makes clear why it is so difficult to prevent antisemitic attacks. An analysis of dozens of indictments and court rulings shows that many of the attackers are ‘lone wolves’ who do not operate within any organizational framework of direction. They come mainly from two entirely different political extremes – white Christians devoted to ‘white supremacy’ on the one hand, and anti-Zionist Muslims on the other. The attackers represent a wide variety of ages, geographical areas, and ethnic backgrounds. Among them is a high proportion of unemployed people and, more generally, of people to whom life has not smiled,” Yonker said.

Looking ahead, he expressed concerns about how antisemitic propaganda on social media has fueled the rising levels of Jew-hatred in the United States. 

“There is currently in the United States a tremendous and dangerous drift against Israel, and antisemitism is flourishing as it has not since the Second World War."