FILE - Damage is seen inside a synagogue where a man armed with a knife and a metal bar is suspected of having set a fire in Rouen, France, on Friday, May 17, 2024. (AP Photo/Oleg Cetinic, File)

TEL AVIV, Israel (AP) — Antisemitic attacks have increased dramatically since the war in Gaza began, though the numbers declined slightly last year from a peak reached immediately after the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack against Israel, according to an annual report about global antisemitism from Tel Aviv University.

“Contrary to popular belief, the report’s findings indicate that the wave of antisemitism did not steadily intensify due to the war in Gaza and the humanitarian disaster there,” said Uriya Shavit, the chief editor of the report.

He said there was a sharp increase in attacks against Jews from October to December 2023, but that in 2024, the number of incidents declined in almost every country around the world.

“The sad truth is that antisemitism reared its head at the moment when the Jewish state appeared weaker than ever and under existential threat,” he said. The numbers of attacks in 2024 was still significantly higher than in 2022, before the war.

Two notable exceptions to this trend were Australia and Italy, where attacks rose sharply in 2024. Australia recorded 1,713 antisemitic incidents in 2024, compared to 1,200 in 2023. This included an arson attack that caused extensive damage at a synagogue in Melbourne in December, as well as other incidents of vandalism, including at a synagogue in Hobart, Tasmania. In Italy, there were 877 antisemitic incidents in 2024, compared with 454 in 2023, and 241 in 2022.

The number of attacks also rose slightly in the U.S. and Argentina, but not as significantly.

The report also condemned the lack of punishment for perpetrators of antisemitic attacks. Many incidents are not reported to the police, and of those, very few result in arrests. In major cities with large Jewish populations, including New York, Chicago, London and Toronto, less than 10% of antisemitic crimes resulted in arrests between 2021 and 2023, the report found.

“Education and legislation without enforcement are meaningless,” said Carl Yonker, a senior researcher at Tel Aviv University who contributed to the report.

Each year, Tel Aviv University’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Irwin Cotler Institute for Democracy, Human Rights and Justice, releases a report about antisemitism ahead of Israel’s commemoration of Holocaust Remembrance Day. The day marks a national memorial for the 6 million Jews killed in the Holocaust, which the country observes starting on Wednesday evening.

The statistics are based on reports from police, national authorities and local Jewish communities.

Earlier this week, the Anti-Defamation League also released its major report about antisemitism in the United States. For the first time in nearly 50 years of compiling data, the organization said that Israel-related incidents, including chants, speeches and signs at rallies protesting Israeli policies, made up more than half of the reported incidents in 2024.

The ADL’s findings add to the intense, divisive debate among American Jews — and others — over the extent to which vehement criticism of Israeli policies and of Zionism, or the belief in Israel as the Jewish nation state, should be considered antisemitic.

News from © The Associated Press, 2025