The number of anti-Semitic acts recorded in several European countries, including Germany, Belgium and France, has increased significantly since October 7, 2023 and the outbreak of war in Israel and Gaza.
A nearly four-fold increase in one year. In France, the Ministry of the Interior publishes frightening figures this Thursday. 1,676 anti-Semitic acts were reported in 2023, compared to 436 the previous year.
According to the Council of Jewish Institutions of France (Crif), the number of anti-Semitic acts committed in the three months following the October attacks is as high as those committed during the previous three years combined.
In France, which has Europe’s largest Jewish and Muslim communities of around 500,000 people, Crif said 57.8% of anti-Semitic acts committed in 2023 were directed against individuals. This involved physical violence or threatening words and gestures. The association also notes “an explosion in the number of anti-Semitic acts in schools“.”The perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts are increasingly younger. School is no longer a sanctuary.“
“Dramatic situation“
In Germany, concern runs through the Jewish community which is trying to adapt by remaining discreet in public spaces. A sign of the deterioration of the current climate, confirmed by the figures published by the federal commissioner responsible for the fight against anti-Semitism, Felix Klein, who describes “a dramatic situation“.
Between October 7 and January 22, 2,249 incidents of anti-Semitic acts were recorded in the country. That is almost as many as the 2,300 acts recorded during the entire year of 2022.
A group that tracks anti-Semitism in Germany said in late November that it had documented a drastic increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the month following the Hamas attack – a total of 994, a 320% increase from the same period. period one year earlier.
In Belgium Neighboring, an independent public body fighting discrimination said it received 91 reports related to the Israel-Hamas conflict between October 7 and December 7 last year, compared to 57 reports for all of 2022.
Belgium has a Jewish population of around 29,000, according to the World Jewish Congress. Although most of the Jewish community in the capital Brussels is secular, the port city of Antwerp has a large ultra-Orthodox population and Europe’s largest Hasidic community.
Proliferation of hateful messages
Most of the reports concerned comments or actions considered anti-Semitic, including cases of Holocaust denial, the independent Unia agency said.
Most cases involved hate messages, more than half of them online, but comments were also made in public spaces. Unia also collaborates with the public prosecutor’s office and the Belgian police in nine cases of assault and damage. The report cites cases of beatings, graffiti and desecration of dozens of graves in the Jewish part of a cemetery near the city of Charleroi.
In Italyanti-Semitic episodes reached unprecedented levels last year, with 216 incidents reported in the last three months of 2023, compared to 241 for the entire previous year.
The Anti-Semitism Observatory said 454 incidents were reported in Italy last year, the highest level ever reported in the country. These included violent clashes between anti-Israel demonstrators who tried to march to a trade fair in the northern city of Vicenza on Saturday to protest the presence of an Israeli pavilion at the event.
