As Israel commemorates Holocaust Remembrance Day on Monday, restaurants, cafés, theaters, and other establishments across the country are shut down to commemorate the 6 million Jews who perished in the Holocaust, known in Hebrew as the Shoah. This year, the painful memories of the Holocaust are mixed with fresh and painful memories of the Oct. 7 attacks on Israel, as well as fears of growing antisemitism around the world.
The Annual Antisemitism Worldwide report, which was published on Sunday by Tel Aviv University and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), shows a sizable increase in antisemitic incidents in Western countries compared to 2022.
According to the report, incidents increased even further in the aftermath of Hamas’ Oct. 7 attack on Israel. During the attack, approximately 1,200 Israelis were killed, thousands were injured, and around 250 were taken hostage.
The attack was the deadliest perpetrated against Jews since the Holocaust. It shocked Israelis, exposing raw nerves and reviving memories of Jewish vulnerability.
In response to Oct. 7, Israel launched a massive war against Hamas. According to Gaza’s Hamas-run Health Ministry, over 34,000 Palestinians have been killed since Hamas’ Oct. 7 offensive, and at least 77,000 Palestinians have been injured.
Israel has been under intense international criticism for its military action in Gaza, and in correlation, there has been a sharp rise in antisemitic incidents. However, according to the report from Tel Aviv University and the ADL, antisemitic incidents were already on the rise in the nine months leading up to October.
There has been a resounding failure in the combatting of antisemitism, despite major efforts being made
“The war helped spread a fire that was already out of control,” Professor Uriya Shavit, head of Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Irwin Cotler Institute for Democracy, Human Rights, and Justice, told The Media Line. “There has been a resounding failure in the combatting of antisemitism, despite major efforts being made.”
The ADL recorded 7,523 antisemitic incidents in 2023, up from 3,697 in 2022. The increase was seen in the US, France, England, Argentina, and other countries.
Shavit said the failure to combat antisemitism requires a major independent investigation.
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“The elephant in the room is being ignored,” he said. “In the past two decades, the presence of major media giants has made it easier to disseminate lies. Antisemitic people received a gift that did not exist previously.”
Shavit said the only way to address this issue is through legislation, which many countries are unwilling to enact. He also described the fight against antisemitism as unfocused and inefficient.
“The attacks usually occur in specific areas, but the effort to combat them is dispersed and abstract,” he said. While the antisemitic incidents in the report occurred outside of Israel, Shavit also assigns blame to the Israeli government, which has dispersed the battle against antisemitism among several ministries rather than allowing the Foreign Ministry to address the matter exclusively.
Myriam Avidan, a 90-year-old Holocaust survivor, told The Media Line that today’s antisemitism does not surprise her. “But it upsets me terribly,” she said. “The Jews are always blamed for everything.”
90-year-old Holocaust survivor Myriam Avidan. (Courtesy)
Avidan was born in Belgium to Jewish parents. The family fled to France and later to Britain to escape the Nazis. Avidan’s mother passed away, leaving her alone as an only child with her father. Later, she moved with her father to Belgian Congo, where he had found a job as an engineer. “We felt antisemitism everywhere and all the time,” Avidan said.
In 1951, the family immigrated to the newly established state of Israel. Her more distant family was murdered by the Nazis or fled to the US.
This is my compensation and my victory
Avidan married in Israel and has three children, eight grandchildren, and 19 great-grandchildren. “This is my compensation and my victory,” she said of her family.
In recent weeks, universities in the US have become a focal point of protests over the Israel-Hamas war. Jewish students at these universities have increasingly reported feeling unsafe on campus. According to a separate report by the ADL, 73% of Jewish college students surveyed have experienced or witnessed some form of antisemitism since the beginning of the 2023-2024 school year alone. Their perception of safety on campus has dropped significantly since Oct. 7.
“Every time there is a flare-up between Israelis and the Palestinians, there is a rise in antisemitism,” Shavit explained. “There is almost a complete association of Zionism with Judaism. While this is a success of the Zionist movement, it comes with a price.”
Hamas’ policy and charter calls for the destruction of the Jewish state and for the killing of Jews and Israelis around the world. While its foremost goal is to eliminate Israel, its worldview is more broadly antisemitic. This ideology, which catapulted to the headlines in October, found support on both poles of the political map.
“The current wave of antisemitism, like previous ones, comes from both the extreme right and left,” Shavit said. “These movements feel at home together, and with not a lot of Israeli targets around the world, to protest the war, they find Jewish targets.”
The scenes of Hamas fighters storming the border and snatching pajama-clad women and children from their beds to be executed or taken hostage in Gaza have been etched in Israelis’ psyches. Many Israelis compare the events of the day to the Holocaust.
In an echo of the Holocaust remembrance slogan “never again,” which was part of the founding ethos of the state of Israel, many Israelis have adopted the slogan “never again is now.”
Approximately 2,000 of Israel’s 133,000 remaining Holocaust survivors were directly affected by the events of Oct. 7 and evacuated from their homes.
“It was like the Holocaust,” Avidan said of the Oct. 7 attacks. “They just killed people, targeting civilians, not soldiers. All the memories came back to me.”
Following Oct. 7, Avidan refuses to watch the news for more than five minutes a day. “I keep on hoping to hear good news, but it’s not coming,” she said.