Antisemitic Attacks Killed More Jews in 2025 Than Any Year in Three Decades, Study Finds

More Jews were killed in antisemitic attacks around the world in 2025 than in any other year in the previous three decades, according to an annual study released by Tel Aviv University on Monday.

The 20 deaths comprised 15 Jews murdered on Dec. 14 at Bondi Beach in Australia, two killed on Oct. 2 during an attack on a Manchester synagogue in the United Kingdom, the two Israeli embassy employees shot on May 21 in Washington, DC, and an 82-year-old Holocaust survivor who succumbed to her injuries after a Molotov cocktail attack on a rally in Colorado on June 1.

No year has been deadlier for Jews in the diaspora since 1994, when the bombing of a Jewish community center in Argentina killed 85 people and wounded more than 300. Argentine investigators have blamed Iran and its Lebanese proxy Hezbollah for the attack.

Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Irwin Cotler Institute for Democracy, Human Rights, and Justice said their data was based on dozens of police departments, specialized agencies, organizations that monitor and combat antisemitism, Jewish community organizations, activists, media reports, and field observations.

“The data raise concern that a high level of antisemitic incidents is becoming a normalized reality,” said Prof. Uriya Shavit, the editor-in-chief of the 152-page report. “The peak in the number of incidents was recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 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.”

Many countries around the world have recorded historic and ongoing surges in antisemitic incidents, including violent attacks, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, invasion of and massacre across southern Israel.

“While in several countries the total number of incidents moderately decreased in 2025 in comparison to 2024, in several other countries, including Britain, Australia, Italy, and Belgium, it moderately increased,” the report stated. “In several countries that saw a decrease in the total number of incidents in comparison to 2024, including France, the number of incidents that involved physical assaults increased. Across the globe, the number of antisemitic incidents remained dozens of percent higher than in the period before the war.”

The researchers provided a thorough breakdown of incidents by country including locations with tiny Jewish populations, such as Norway (1,300 Jews, 40 incidents,) Luxembourg (700 Jews, 115 incidents), Bulgaria (2,000 Jews, 55 incidents), the Czech Republic (3,500 Jews, 31 criminal incidents), and New Zealand (7,500 Jews, 143 incidents).

One part of the report focused on antisemitism in medical settings and cited a study of Jewish health-care providers in which 39.2 percent of respondents said they had experienced antisemitism on the job while 26.4 percent said they felt threatened. Another analysis found that the likelihood of a Jewish doctor or nurse experiencing antisemitism went up 381 percent if working in an academic medical center or 241 percent for those choosing private practice.

Australia’s special envoy to combat antisemitism contributed an analysis of the events which led up to the Bondi Beach terrorist attack, describing a loss of faith in the government’s ability to counter the threat.

“In January 2025, a childcare center near a synagogue in suburban Sydney was firebombed. Graffiti, vandalism, and threats became the norm. Many in the wider community, as well as in the Jewish community, felt that all levels of government had lost control of the situation,” wrote Jillian Segal, a former president of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. “A joint federal and state terrorism police taskforce was established by the federal and state governments and the states engaged in law reform, but it was a case of too little, too late.”

Following the report’s first section which provided an overview of incidents around the world, the second included an essay titled “The Fading Voice of Buckley” by analyst Carl Yonker in which he described the role of the late William F. Buckley, Jr. in combating conspiracism and antisemitism on the American political right during the 20th century.

“As editor of the National Review and intending to shape the future of the conservative movement, Buckley treated antisemitism less as an embarrassing eccentricity than as a kind of poison destroying the movement’s claims to seriousness, and – worse – its ability to agree on what was real,” Yonker wrote before describing Buckley’s efforts against the promotion of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion in the 1950s and Holocaust deniers in the 1980s.

“What makes the Tucker Carlson moment so haunting is that it looks like a movement returning to the same moral problem under conditions that make the old remedy – editorial discipline – harder to apply,” Yonker explained.

In an interview with Shavit included in the report, renowned Holocaust historian Christopher Browning warned that “ultimately, Jews are one of the minorities. I mean, if you can trash Haitians and trash Somalis, eventually you’ll get to attacking Jews as well.” He argued that US President Donald Trump creates a “permission structure” that “allows people to freely express their prejudices with absolutely no criticism, no restraint, no inhibition.”

In a separate report published to coincide with Israel’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, which began Monday evening and will end on Tuesday evening, the Israeli Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism released a 14-page report showing the highest number of antisemitic acts last year, by its tally, occurred in the United States (301), the United Kingdom (140), and France (58).

Worldwide, each month saw an average of 74 incidents with peaks in April (118) and August (110), including a wave of vandalism and arson attacks fueling the summer surge. Violence against Jews (27.2 percent of recorded incidents) averaged 11.5 occurrences monthly with August also serving as a flashpoint.

According to the report’s authors, the August uptick “may be associated with heightened discourse surrounding allegations of a deliberate famine in Gaza, alongside official Israeli statements concerning the potential for a full occupation of the territory.”

The report called vandalism and property damage (38.4 percent of incidents) the “most frequent mode of attack” before identifying synagogues, cemeteries, and storefronts as the top targets.

The report also documented a seasonal trend in incidents, with a month-after-month rise from April through August before a sharp drop in September and through autumn. One potential explanation offered for this pattern could be that “the summer vacation period, during which increased international travel by Israelis may lead to greater interaction — and potential friction — with local populations.”

“What begins as incitement online continues directly into attacks against Jewish communities,” said Amichai Chikli, the minister for diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism.

Avi Cohen-Scali, the ministry’s director general, concurred: “Governments must uproot antisemitism, adopt policies to combat it, and invest in enforcement, legislation, and education.” He vowed that “Israel will act with all available tools to protect Jews everywhere in the world.”

The Tel Aviv University report chided the Israeli ministry for combating antisemitism, arguing it “has not contributed in any meaningful way to the cause.”

Suggesting more funds to Israel’s Foreign Ministry, the report argued that “only diplomatic missions have the capacity to engage in the kind of in-person contacts with Jewish communities, public officials, and civil society activists that are necessary for impacting and adjusting counter-antisemitism policies.”