Fatalities from antisemitic attacks in 2025 reach highest toll in 30 years, Israeli analysis finds

JTA – The number of fatalities from antisemitic attacks reached their highest in more than three decades last year, with 20 people killed in four attacks on three continents, according to a new analysis from Tel Aviv University. 

The fatal attacks included those in Sydney; Washington, DC; Boulder, Colorado; and Manchester, England. They marked the highest number of deadly attacks since the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community centre in Buenos Aires, which killed 85 people. 

The study compiled reports from police, governments, and local Jewish communities and found that vandalism and verbal harassment fell in many countries – but violent attacks against Jews, including beatings and stone-throwing, increased in some places. 

Overall, the total number of antisemitic incidents increased from 1 727 in 2024 to 1 750 in 2025, compared with 1 200 incidents in 2023 and 472 in 2022. 

“The data raise concern that a high level of antisemitic incidents is becoming a normalised reality,” Uriya Shavit, the study’s editor-in-chief, said in a statement. “The peak in the number of incidents was recorded in the immediate aftermath of the 7 October attack, after which we began to see a downward trend. But unfortunately, that trend did not continue in 2025.” 

Tel Aviv University releases the analysis every year in conjunction with Yom HaShoah, the Holocaust memorial day. 

The report also included a separate study profiling those indicted for antisemitic offences from 2020 to 2025, finding that many attacks are perpetrated by “lone wolves” and are therefore hard to prevent. 

“Offenders align with two main ideological orientations,” the study’s authors wrote. “They are predominantly Christian white supremacists or Muslims who apply antisemitism as a response to grievances about Middle Eastern political developments.” 

The study’s authors wrote that the “most worrying phenomenon” of the past year had been the “normalisation of antisemitic rhetoric in American political discourse”, writing that US President Donald Trump had “tolerated, as no contemporary president has, deep-seated, loathsome antisemites within his camp, and continues to do so for cynical political reasons”. 

The presence of antisemitic rhetoric within Trump’s Republican Party has been a source of internal tension for months. Trump has indicated displeasure with those promoting the rhetoric, particularly as a chief purveyor, media personality Tucker Carlson, opposed Trump’s decision to go to war against Iran. But his vice-president, JD Vance, has declined to draw a line against the rise of antisemitic figures in the party. 

“The result is a new culture of everything-goes that is undermining the sense that Jews have had for decades that their future in America is secure,” the study’s authors wrote. 

The report also criticised the Israeli government’s response to the rise in global antisemitism, writing that the Ministry for Diaspora Affairs and Combating Antisemitism has “not contributed in any meaningful way to the cause, and in some cases has been an embarrassment”. The ministry has drawn criticism for allying with far-right figures around the world. 

“Israeli politicians and media have, particularly in recent months, continuously expanded the scope of what qualifies as antisemitism, at times in absurd or hasty ways,” the study’s foreword read. “In doing so, they do not win arguments or silence critics, as they perhaps believe; rather, they discredit a crucial fight by politicising it and emptying it of analytic meaning.” 

The study found that Canada, the United Kingdom, Belgium, Italy, and Australia all posted notable increases in reported antisemitic incidents in 2025, compared with the previous year. But the number of antisemitic incidents fell in the United States and France, even as both countries saw notable physical attacks on Jewish targets.