Rise in hate crimes against Jews shows that antisemitism has no right or left

There has been a significant and concerning rise in antisemitic incidents reported across the world since the 7/10 Hamas attack and subsequent war in Gaza. The Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reported a 300% and 400% surge in antisemitic incidents in Austria and the United States, respectively. The London police reported an annual increase of 1,353%, and in Germany, a jump of 240% was noted. The European Commission noted that the levels of antisemitism resemble "some of the darkest periods in history." In Canada, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau stated that the dimensions of the phenomenon in his country are "terrifying."

A pro-Israel protest in Washington D.C.

Historically, such waves of antisemitism have been attributed to the rise of the far right, even though governments usually avoid making specific pronouncements. Surveys and articles published in the past decade are also cautious about causal relationships and tend to see antisemitism as a rooted phenomenon that surfaces during periods of societal stress—whether related to events in Israel, such as wars or terrorist attacks, or unrelated to the Jewish community, such as unemployment, inflation, or the outbreak of a pandemic. If every event serves as a pretext for antisemitism, it is not surprising that Jews are the religious group suffering the highest level of harassment globally, relative to their tiny proportion of the population, standing at 0.2%, according to extensive research by the Pew Research Center.

The fear of researchers to highlight causal relationships does not prevent various groups from doing so. Political organizations associated with the extreme right, such as Germany’s AfD party, the French National Rally, Hungarian leader Viktor Orban’s party Fidesz, or Law and Justice in Poland, exploit waves of antisemitism as a way to justify anti-Muslim rhetoric. These factors deliberately mix antisemitism and immigration to push the public to choose between defending the Jewish community and supporting the government's immigration policies.

However, in reality, antisemitism has been deeply rooted in Europe since long before the recent waves of Muslim immigration. Although researchers are cautious about linking immigration waves with antisemitism, in recent decades they have begun to measure the sentiment of Muslims towards Jews, due to the high migration from the Middle East and North Africa, where the rate of antisemitism exceeds 70%. In 2003, the European Monitoring Centre on Racism and Xenophobia (EUMC), a European Union research institute, for the first time disputed the connection between the extreme right and waves of antisemitism. Their claim was that waves of modern antisemitism are typically rather due to "an emerging alliance of pro-Palestinian leftists, anti-globalization activists, and Islamists." Although the report received criticism as "generalizing against entire populations," it sparked in-depth research on the subject.

In the past decade, research has found that antisemitism in Europe has intensified, and concurrently, its patterns have changed. For example, it is now less anonymous and manifests in the context of events in Israel. In parallel, terms such as "Imported Antisemitism" or "New Antisemitism" have been adopted to explain that the source now often lies among Muslim migrants.

A 2018 survey by the European Union found that instances of antisemitism against Jews in Germany were mostly carried out by "extremist Muslims," as defined by the respondents. A survey by the Henry Jackson Society, a conservative British think tank, found that over a third of British Muslims believe that Jews wield a disproportionate influence in politics and business, more than twice as much as the general population. This data paints a challenging picture, but some caution against the use of such data at a national policy level. Matthias Becker, a researcher at the Center for Research on Antisemitism at Technische Universität Berlin, argues that in Germany in particular, these connections are often used to evade responsibility for combating antisemitism and to simultaneously legitimize anti-Muslim racism.

In a 2018 study, Becker claimed that antisemitism in Europe is not influenced by Muslim migration. He also stated that while there is evidence that people from Muslim communities may hold more antisemitic views than the general population, these attitudes do not necessarily translate into actions, arguing that because Muslim migrants are more concerned about their status in their adopted countries, they are more likely to avoid public displays of hatred. However, this research faced criticism, with accusations that it blames the victim and ignores EU surveys that demonstrate the high rate of antisemitic incidents among Muslims.

Becker represents a larger view that sees antisemitism and Islamophobia as two sides of the same coin. This perspective argues that when there is a rise in antisemitism in a Western country, there is usually a corresponding increase in Islamophobia. Since October 7th, there have also been reports of a surge in Islamophobia, although the data suggests a marginal increase compared to the surge in antisemitic incidents, which is even more disproportionate due to how much larger the Muslim population is compared to the Jewish population.

It is seemingly difficult and, perhaps, even impossible to establish a causal link between surges in Muslim migration and a rise in antisemitism. There is also seemingly little point, as antisemitism is not confined to any particular political faction, but exists on both the right and left sides of the political spectrum, in Muslim-majority countries and in Europe, sometimes anonymous and sometimes organized, but always with the same goal: to cast the Jews as terrifying figures.