In connection with the 80th anniversary of the end of the Second World War, on the European front, after Hitler’s suicide and the defeat of Nazi Germany, the Anti-Defamation League, based in the United States, published a study that showed that violent anti-Semitic incidents were increasing in the seven countries with the largest Jewish communities outside of Israel. We are talking about the United States, of course, with almost six million Jews, also in the Americas of Canada and Argentina, in Europe of France, the United Kingdom and Germany, and in Oceania of Australia, the scene on Sunday of a terrorist attack against families celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach, the famous Bondi Beach, in Sydney. More than 15 people will have died.
In this study, the United States emerged, even due to demographics, as the country with the most anti-Semitic incidents, with 9,354 in 2024, with an accelerated progression as can be seen from the evolution of the numbers: 2,717 in 2021, 3,698 in 2022, 8,873 in 2023. A worrying trend that dates back to before the massacre of Israelis by Hamas on October 7, 2023. and the retaliatory war against Gaza, which intensified after Israel’s attack on Palestinian territory.
The increase in cases since 2021 is also impressive in Germany, the United Kingdom and France, and also in Australia. In the latter, with a Jewish population of just over 100,000 people, the number of reported incidents rose from 447 in 2021 (and slightly more in 2022 and 2023) to 2062 last year. And there were direct references to this rise in anti-Semitism when Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu criticized his Australian counterpart Anthony Albanese a few months ago for having decided to recognize a Palestinian State, in a mix of international politics and domestic politics that is never healthy. Israel, through Netanyahu and even more so through the voice of Foreign Minister Gideon Saar, has now returned, after this attack, to punish the Australian government, saying that successive warnings had been made about the possible consequences of the “wave of anti-Semitism on the streets of Australia in the last two years”.
Albanese immediately reacted to the Bondi Beach events by declaring that it was an “evil act of anti-Semitism, terrorism that struck at the heart of our nation”. Internationally, multiple voices of condemnation of the attack were heard coming, for example, from European leaders such as French President Emmanuel Macron or German Chancellor Friedrich Merz, as well as UN Secretary-General António Guterres. The Portuguese Government reacted through a statement from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, “vehemently condemning the attack on the Hanukkah celebration in Bondi Beach, Australia – a heinous act of anti-Semitism”. President Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, for his part, reaffirmed his “condemnation of violence especially caused by hatred, namely anti-Semitism, racism, xenophobia, intolerance, which reminds us of the darkest times in our recent history, which threatens human dignity and respect for others”.
After the condolences and recriminations, and hoping that in the meantime the authorship of what happened in Sydney can be determined, it will be necessary to act even more against anti-Semitism. The fact that a democratic, open, tolerant society is on the rise in Australia, which in recent decades has undertaken the construction of a national identity based on diversity, should serve as a special warning to everyone. As the New York Times highlighted, the largest proportion of Holocaust survivors live there, apart from Israel. A refuge country that runs the risk of ceasing to be, at least, a safe haven, at a time when refuges should not be necessary. “An attack on Australian Jews is an attack on all Australians,” said Albanese, quite rightly. An idea that must be repeated by European leaders as well, who know the past of persecution of Jews, whether by the Inquisition in Portugal and Spain, the pogroms in Central and Eastern Europe or the very recent Holocaust. Above all – even if the anti-Semitic phenomenon dates back to before the 7th of October – it must be very clear that criticism of the Israeli government, and even the State of Israel, is legitimate, but not the association of what is happening in the Middle East with a religion and people who are citizens like any other, although with a different faith, especially when this association generates blind hatred that ranges from the painting of offensive phrases on the walls, verbal insults in the streets or the vandalization of cemeteries, to cases of terrorism, like this one in Australia and other previous ones, such as in France, in 2012, the attack on a Jewish school.
At the beginning of the year, I interviewed, as I was passing through Lisbon, the Spaniard Juan Caldés, from the European Jewish Association, who spoke to DN about the growing hostility towards Jews on the continent and the relationship with the war between Israel and Hamas. The title was: “Western Europe is today much worse than Eastern Europe in terms of anti-Semitism.” There could be a simple explanation, which would be that Western Europe, especially France and the United Kingdom, is the one that first recognized citizenship rights for Jews and protected them and, therefore, today has the most numerous communities, those that escaped the Holocaust. It is certainly something more complicated, and without a doubt it has some connection with the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, but what is clear is that it is intolerable and must be stopped.
Deputy Director of Diário de Notícias