The Most Antisemitic Thing

By tracking current manifestations of heinous antisemitism around the world, one can find trendlines and commonalities. Consider some of today’s worst offenses.

Robert Bowers killed eleven Jewish worshipers in a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018, in the deadliest anti-Semitic attack on U.S. soil. He had come to believe a conspiracy theory that Jews are bringing in foreigners to replace White people in the country.

According to the ADL (anti-defamation league), 2022 had the most antisemitic incidents over the past decades, totaling 3,697, a 32% rise from the prior year. According to Statistica, that represents a CAGR (compounded annual growth rate) of over 19% since 2013 when there were 751 incidents.

In Europe, 2009 was the worst year for antisemitic incidents with 1,118, which dropped to 371 in 2020.

In regards to violent antisemitic attacks, the United Kingdom had a far greater total than any other country, with 173 in 2021. That compares to 28 in the United States according to Statistica. When normalizing for the Jewish population in each country, Austria was actually the worst country with 7.8 violent attacks per 100,000 Jews. While Austria killed or purged almost all of its Jews in World War II, many Eastern European Jews have settled in and around Vienna over the recent decades.

The single most deadly attack against Jews was the bombing of the Jewish community center in Buenos Aires, Argentina which killed 85 people and wounded over 300 in July 1994. The Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah together with Iranian support conducted the attack.

The ADL did a global survey of antisemitism in 2014 which it has periodically updated for certain regions. Muslim countries were by far the most anti-Jewish, with almost every Arab in the West Bank and Gaza harboring antisemitic attitudes. Consider that Muslim antisemitic countries have NO JEWS living in their borders and haven’t had any for decades.

Antisemitism is not just about statistics. There are many laws, policies and people which are clearly antisemitic.

The most blatant antisemitic policy is barring Jews from praying at their holiest site on the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The United Nations and almost every country supports the disgraceful policy, calling it the “status quo”, as if that defends the blatantly anti-Jewish action.

The most antisemitic international law was passed in December 2016, UN Security Council Resolution 2334 which declared it illegal for Jews to live east of the 1949 Armistice Lines, including in the eastern part of Jerusalem and the Old City. While the resolution mentions ‘Israel’, the term ‘settlers’ and ‘settlements’ has been used exclusively for Jews (whether or not Israeli) and excludes Israeli Arabs. Banning Jews from living somewhere – let alone in their holiest city and in the center of the Jewish holy land – is disgustingly antisemitic.

College campuses routinely engage in antisemitism, calling Israel a ‘colonial entity,’ which negates the thousands of years of Jewish history in the land. Negating a people’s heritage so routinely is outrageously antisemitic.

One college professor did more than deny Jewish history. Joseph Massad of Columbia University audaciously declared that the Jews in the Bible are actually ‘Palestinian Hebrews!’ Cultural and historical appropriation at its most egregious. Massad is Jordanian and claims Palestinian as his nationality.

If it sounds too crazy that a New York City Ivy League school should have an insane antisemitic teacher espousing such views, consider that the AMCHA Initiative found that Harvard University had the most antisemitic incidents of all US campuses in the 2021-2022 academic year, a total of 25, nearly double the number of the second place school.

The most antisemitic member of congress today is also a Palestinian-American like Columbia’s Massad, Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-MI). She told an audience of alt-left socialists in 2021 that Jews hide in the shadows controlling people for profit, from ‘Gaza to Detroit.’

By far the most antisemitic governmental charter is the Hamas Charter of 1988, belonging to the popular terrorist group which has 58% of the seats in the Palestinian Authority’s parliament. In addition to saying that Jews extort people (article 20), that they were behind the global wars (articles 22 and 32) and destroy societies and values (article 28), it states “Our struggle against the Jews is very great and very serious” (preamble) and calls for Moslems to kill Jews and destroy the Jewish State (opening, articles 7, 31, 32, 33 and 34).

The Simon Wiesenthal Center ranked the top ten worst antisemitic incidents of 2022 and gave top scores to the major influencers who fan the flames of hatred. It highlighted Kanye West’s bilestorm against Jews in which he said that Jews control Black people, aren’t even real Jews, and that he wants to kill them. After spewing so much hate, former President Donald Trump hosted him at his house together with Nick Fuentes, another raging antisemite.

To counterbalance this negativity, a March 2023 Pew Research poll found that most US adults had a favorable opinion of Jews, whether or not they knew someone personally.

There are a few take-aways from this collection of anti-Semitic incidents and people.

You don’t need to live near Jews or know any to be filled with antisemitism. Ayaan Hirsi Ali pointed this out in a Wall Street Journal editorial in July 2019, that she grew up in Somalia and was essentially breast-fed Jew-hatred even though she never met a Jew. Almost all of the leading antisemitic countries have no Jews but an ingrained culture of Jew hatred.
Violence against Jews necessitates their presence, so while Muslim Jew-free countries are the most antisemitic, the highest frequency of violent attacks happens where Jews have a long history of persecution and have recently started to move to again (Austria #1, Germany #3).
Universities – not just including, but especially prestigious schools – are normalizing antisemitism and ushering in violence against Jews. It is being accomplished through a combination of billions of dollars of Middle East money funneled into the schools and a twisted view of Jews and the Jewish State being elite racists who must be fought aggressively in the name of intersectionality.
Influencers are increasingly vocal about their antisemitism and comfortable with their antisemitic friends. Politicians like Donald Trump, Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar and Marjorie Taylor Greene, as well as supermodel Bella Hadid and basketball star Kyrie Irving talk directly to millions of social media “followers” about Jewish conspiracies. Their followers listen to the nonsense, which ignites more Jew hatred and violence.
Palestinians’ perception of themselves as victims of Jews weaponized their antisemitism. Time has embedded the notion and has continued to transform their Jew-hatred in various toxic ways. People and governments sympathetic to their situation have given their noxious antisemitism absolution, spreading the vile propaganda far-and-wide.

The common theme is that Jew hatred is taught – in communities and schools and from influencers – and the number of dangerous teachers and the size of the global student body are rapidly growing. Whether via the passive vile drip or in the active embrace of the jaundiced narratives for those with whom people feel charged emotional connection, antisemitism is becoming pervasive once again. And as the cancerous worldview spreads, antisemitic policies and laws get mainstreamed and enacted.

In this world so distrustful of information, lesson plans are built on emotions, and nothing rings the register and feels so familiar as the touchstone of Jew bashing.