THE JEWISH community has been a consistent target of hate throughout history. There is even a specific word for this phenomenon: antisemitism. That is, any and all forms of hate or prejudice toward Jews. While many believe that antisemitism has lost prevalence after the Holocaust, the past few years have seen an alarming increase in antisemitic incidents worldwide. Within May 2023, a UK playground was defaced with swastikas[1], a man from Illinois was arrested after repeated violent threats to a synagogue and Jewish national organizations, and in Serbia, a man with a Nazi slogan on his shirt was detained for the murder of eight people[2].

The history of antisemitism

   Antisemitism is one of society’s oldest forms of hatred. Prejudice toward Jews dates back to biblical times, with the Torah[3] repeatedly recounting their persecution. Prominent biblical examples include when the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses II enslaved the Jewish people and the story of Purim where the advisor to the king of the Achaemenid Empire attempted to murder every Jew in the empire. Aside from these stories, Jews were persecuted before the Common Era for their refusal to worship idols or adopt the dominant religions of Middle Eastern kingdoms.

   Within Europe, Jews were forced to either convert or flee after the formation of Christianity and its eventual adoption as the state religion of Rome[4]. Thus, Jews scattered across the globe where they remained just as vulnerable to persecution. The choice to convert or flee cropped up many times after Rome, oftentimes resulting in expulsion from countries like England (1290), France (1394), and Spain (1492)[4].

   Jews were demonized and blamed for many atrocities in Europe. One significant phenomenon was the blood libel accusations; Jews were inculpated for unexplainable deaths of Christian children, leading to the conspiracy that Jews were devil-like and performed ritual murder[4]. Already in an ostracized position, it was simple for the European public to blame Jews for the Bubonic Plague, with Germany and Austria burning alive an estimated 100,000 Jews[4]. Not only did Jewish people face persecution in the form of pogroms[5], but also in the loss of legal and civil rights. They were not usually considered full citizens, and as such job options were limited to “dirty” trades including moneylending[4]. Thus, the stereotype of Jews being greedy and occupying money-related professions was born—a stereotype that remains pervasive today.

   The Holocaust is perhaps the greatest atrocity faced by the Jewish people. From around 1933 to 1945, Hitler persecuted and murdered over 6 million Jews, which was approximately two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population at the time. Leading up to this radical persecution, propaganda blamed Jews for Germany’s World War I loss and the economic and political issues that followed[6], and the German government systematically implemented discriminatory laws, stripping Jews of their civil and legal rights. Jews were then segregated into overpopulated ghettos and shipped to concentration camps—death camps where the elderly, children, and women were killed in gas chambers and those remaining were forced into physical labor, living in extreme conditions. Germany’s genocide of Jews was a gradual process and today’s rise in antisemitism mirrors early Nazi rhetoric and propaganda. Not until 1941 did the Nazi party enact their “Final Solution to the Jewish Question” policy that called for intentional mass murder[6].

Explaining antisemitism’s roots in the past

   Historically, Jews are a diasporic people—their population has been scattered across the globe, largely due to persecution. As such, they have always been a minority that governments have wished to assimilate. But, faced with the choice to convert or flee, Jews were often unwilling to abandon their customs and religion. This refusal to conform and persistence in existence—even if that meant fleeing—likely earned a reputation for stubbornness and disdain towards the Jewish people by European powers[4]. In an interview with The Yonsei Annals, Rabbi Peter Levi, a regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, notes that antisemitism has historically risen out a fear of people who are different. He explains that times when antisemitism is highest tend to correspond to increased anxieties in society: “Any problem, challenge, or ill of society can get blamed upon an outside group, and for too much of history, Jews have been that most conspicuous outside group.”

   Additionally, historical antisemitism is more than just anti-Judaism. The Jewish people can be considered not only a religious group, but also an ethnic, cultural, and sometimes even racial group. The notion of Jews as a racial group has historically been perpetuated by groups persecuting Jews, such as the Nazis’ asserting Jews as a distinct, inferior race[6]. However, due to their diasporic past, the Jewish people consist of multiple ethnic and cultural groups, such as Ashkenazi (Central and Eastern European), Sephardic (Iberian Peninsula), and Mizrahi Jews (the Middle East). There are multiple religious denominations amongst Jews, to the point that one does not even need to be religious to consider themselves Jewish. While antisemitism may have begun as anti-Judaism, the continuous “othering” of Jews also expanded the notion to a hatred of Jews as an ethnicity and culture.

   Stereotypes and ignorance are the two primary modes through which antisemitism is perpetuated. The blood libel accusations and demonizing propaganda present an example of how stereotypes and ignorance feed off one another. Images of Jews with exaggerated noses, devil horns and tails, and beady eyes pasted across European cities likely both fed into, and subsequently bolstered, conspiracies related to Jews. If one is ignorant to the truth of these stereotypes, it is easy for them to snowball into something more harmful.

Antisemitism’s global rise

   There has been a steady increase in antisemitic incidents, both in occurrence and severity within the past few years. Tracking and reporting the rise of antisemitism internationally has been The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), the world’s chief anti-hate organization. In the United States alone, a record-high 3,697 incidents of harassment, vandalism, and assaults occurred, up 36% from 2021[7]. Notably, of all religious-based hate crimes, 78% targeted Jews[7], despite Jews only making up around 2% of the U.S. population.

   While the United States has experienced the greatest spike in antisemitic incidents, other countries worldwide are following similar patterns. The Brazilian Israelite Confederation counted 384 cases of reported antisemitism in 2022, including racism, Holocaust denial, and Nazism. In one instance, a person gave a Nazi salute to the São Paulo Jewish Museum’s security cameras after vandalizing the museum entrance with a swastika[8]. 

   Most antisemitism today occurs online, but these interactions have led to the increase of in-person violence. In early 2023, a man shot two Jewish men at synagogues in a highly-Jewish-populated Los Angeles neighborhood. Prior to the hate crime, the man had sent threatening antisemitic messages to former classmates between August and November 2022[9]. While this is just one example, the use of social media to engage in antisemitic rhetoric often preludes any real-life violence.

   The prominence of social media in this matter can be seen with Kanye West. In 2022, the rapper made a myriad of antisemitic comments in interviews and social media posts, getting kicked off multiple platforms. He made false claims about Jewish people running the media, and in an interview with conspiracy theorist Alex Jones, he even said he “likes Nazis” and expressed admiration for Hitler[10]. With West boasting a Twitter-following of over 30 million before being banned, comments like these cannot be taken lightly. Celebrities like West have immense influence, and social media is a tool through which clickable things—controversy and hate—spread fast. There were over 10,000 uses of “Ye is Right” on Twitter between October 2022 and February 2023, with likely 6 million people viewing these tweets[11].

   College campuses are another place where antisemitism continues to grow. Across 130 college campuses in the United States, there were 219 incidents in 2022, a 41% increase from 2021. The majority of these incidents were harassment and vandalism, with 33% of all incidents including a swastika[4]. The University of California Berkeley is one university that has had repeated incidents of antisemitism. More recently in January 2023, “No Jew Go Away” was found graffitied on a door in their student union building[12]. Antisemitic incidents of this nature can make college campuses feel unsafe for Jewish students.

   Europe has also faced a recent rise in antisemitism, notably in France, England, and Germany. While France’s incident count in 2022 went down 26% from 2021, the 436 incidents recorded remains on par with this century’s average[13]. However, the way France has dealt with antisemitism is quite laissez-faire[14]; of all reported physical antisemitic violence occurring between 2015 and 2019, 63% of the reports were disregarded[13]. Dismissing antisemitic incidents only encourages more to occur, as people may feel emboldened that they can get away with it. Additionally, the incidents reported are only those reported. There are likely many not being reported, and the fact that reported antisemitism is oftentimes not taken seriously discourages people to report it in the first place.

Why is antisemitism on the rise?

   As with the past, antisemitism is perpetuated primarily through stereotypes and ignorance. The advent of social media has no doubt abetted in the spread of harmful stereotypes and misinformation about the Jewish people. The aforementioned case of West serves as a perfect example. In claiming that Jewish people control the media, West perpetuates a harmful Jewish stereotype. This stereotype of the “media-controlling Jew” evolved from the previously discussed stereotype of the “greedy Jew.” The moneylending of the Middle Ages, and the subsequent banking jobs as society modernized, created the impression that Jews were controlling all the money. Thus, as time progressed, it was easy to extrapolate the money-hungry stereotype to a power-hungry stereotype. Nowadays, media is an incredible source of power—especially when it comes to controlling narratives. Social media allows for people to easily learn of antisemitic claims like West’s and falsely believe it to be true.

 Social media has also facilitated the mushrooming of white supremacist organizations and ideologies. According to a study of French and German internet content run by the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, there was a “seven-fold increase in antisemitic content on Twitter, Facebook and Telegram, and over a thirteen-fold increase in antisemitic content in German” when comparing the first two months of 2020 and 2021[15]. While this does not confirm that white supremacist groups were behind these actions, it is likely to be the case, considering the ADL’s data on the United States. As noted in their 2022 antisemitism report, antisemitic propaganda distributed by white supremacist groups about doubled from 2021 to 852 incidents[4]. Some of the conspiracies even include Holocaust denial which claims that Jews falsified the “Holocaust myth” for their own benefit[6]. Social media therefore makes it incredibly easy for hate groups to spread harmful stereotypes and organize physical violence.

   Both online and offline, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and its discourses have been central to antisemitism’s rise. At many universities there is a strong support for the Palestinian people and condemnation towards the Israeli government’s violent actions against them. Levi explains how with increased anti-Israel attitudes, antisemitism has become entwined with pro-Palestinian spaces. He says that anti-Israel dialogue is “too often relying on historical [antisemitic] stereotypes or Nazi analogies” and “demonizing and blaming all the Jewish people for a foreign government’s position.” Regarding antisemitism’s rise on college campuses, Levi notes that there are often efforts by people outside the Jewish community to define what it means to be Jewish. He explains that this often reduces being Jewish to “just [a] religion protecting the notion of Jewish peoplehood” or redefines Jewish identity by “rejecting the way that the Jewish people identify with the land of Israel and the modern state of Israel.”

   A central misunderstanding with the discourse around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict comes from Zionism. Its most basic definition is simply a belief that the Jewish people should have their own nation-state. Post-World War II and the Holocaust, the Jewish people were granted a nation in the only location in the world that all Jews have a historical connection to—the land of Israel. As a diasporic and perpetually persecuted people, the state of Israel represents a safe haven for Jews worldwide. The misunderstanding of Zionism occurs when, as Levi explains, it is attacked as a political ideology that has nothing to do with Judaism and Jewish identity. The political ideology perception of Zionism implies that a Zionist supports the political actions of Israel. In truth, one can simultaneously support Israel’s existence as a Zionist, condemn the Israeli government’s actions, and support the Palestinian people.

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   Combating antisemitism must happen on both an individual and societal level. Bringing awareness to the issue is key, especially given antisemitism is rooted in misinformation. Whether it be extremist groups spreading antisemitic rhetoric online or middle-schoolers drawing swastikas out of ignorance, most antisemitic incidents can be avoided through education. Individual efforts to read about and understand basic Jewish history are beneficial, but more large-scale change, like implementing anti-hate courses into school curricula, must also be made. To address the spread of misinformation, social media platforms must limit hate speech on their platforms. We all need to take responsibility for change, but that responsibility is shared among powerful organizations and individual people.

[1] Swastika: Emblem of the Nazi party

[2] Akron Jewish News

[3] Torah: Jewish scripture; also known as the Old Testament

[4] The Anti-Defamation League

[5] Pogrom: The organized massacre of an ethnic group, typically referring to Jewish people in Central and Eastern Europe

[6] The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum

[7] The New York Times

[8] The Brazilian Report

[9] NPR

[10] Forbes

[11] The Society for Human Resource Management

[12] The Jewish News of Northern California

[13] The Jerusalem Post

[14] Laissez-faire: An attitude of letting things run their natural course

[15] European Commission