39 Jews murdered: The Global rise of Antisemitism over the past decade

As the world marks Holocaust Remembrance Day 2025, a grim picture of rising antisemitism emerges from a new report reviewing global trends between 2014 and 2024. Over the past decade, 39 Jews were murdered in antisemitic attacks abroad, while millions of hateful posts flooded social media platforms, and antisemitic rhetoric penetrated mainstream political and cultural discourse. What once belonged to extremist fringes has moved to the center, with lines between anti-Zionism and antisemitism becoming increasingly blurred.

The turning point came in 2014 during Israel's Operation Protective Edge, when antisemitic incidents across Europe skyrocketed by as much as 400%. Synagogues were attacked, Jewish businesses vandalized, and calls of "Death to Jews" echoed during anti-Israel protests. The violence continued with deadly attacks in France in 2015 and 2017, including the murder of four Jews at a kosher supermarket and the brutal killing of Sarah Halimi in her Paris apartment.

In the U.S., antisemitism surged both online and offline. The 2016 presidential campaign saw 2.6 million antisemitic tweets, and in 2018, the Tree of Life synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh marked the deadliest antisemitic attack in U.S. history. Incidents also spiked on college campuses and within political parties in both Europe and America, while hate speech increasingly cloaked itself as political critique.

Even the COVID-19 pandemic failed to curb the hatred—it merely shifted its form. Conspiracy theories blaming Jews for the virus spread widely, while Holocaust imagery was misused by anti-lockdown protesters. From 2021 onward, flare-ups in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict consistently triggered waves of antisemitic violence and online hate.

The October 7, 2023 Hamas attack on Israel ignited an unprecedented global surge in antisemitic incidents. In 2024 alone, there was a 340% worldwide increase in antisemitic activity compared to 2022, including a 288% rise in the U.S., 350% in France, and over 500% in Canada. What was once the concern of a few communities has become a global crisis. Jewish communities now report feeling unsafe even in countries once considered safe havens, as the fight against antisemitism becomes a broader struggle to defend democratic values and civil society at large.