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Antisemitism was on the rise across Europe last year before surging following the Oct. 7 terror attack against Israel and the ensuing war in Gaza, according to the European Union Agency for Fundamental Rights (FRA).
The agency’s annual survey, which was conducted in the first half of 2023, found that 96 percent of Jews faced antisemitism in the past year and 80 percent felt it had gotten worse in recent years. Seventy percent said they had occasionally hid their Jewish identity, and more than 50 percent worry about their safety and the safety of their families.
“Jews are more frightened than ever before,” FRA director Sirpa Rautio said in the survey’s foreword.
While the report’s data comes from surveys conducted before Oct. 7, FRA reached out to the Jewish umbrella organizations that assisted it in the initial survey after the attack, which saw Hamas and other Gaza-based Islamist militants kill about 1,200 people and take approximately 250 hostage.
Eleven out of 13 organizations responded, saying that antisemitic incidents had skyrocketed. Some organizations reported increases of 400 percent or more.
Rautio said that conflicts in the Middle East “can lead to peaks in anti-Jewish incidents in the EU,” which appears to have happened.
Israel has come under heavy international criticism for its massive military response to the terror attack, which has seen more than 37,000 Palestinians killed, according to the Hamas-run Gaza Ministry of Health.
