This weekend’s attack in Boulder, Colorado by a man shouting “Free Palestine” and throwing molotov cocktails comes 10 days after two Israeli embassy staffers were killed by a man who yelled the same thing after shooting them, reloading, and firing more at the woman who tried to crawl away. Earlier this spring, a pro-Palestinian activist also threw molotov cocktails into the home of Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, who he had planned to attack with a hammer.
A statistical picture of antisemitic violence from 2025 so far isn’t available. But what we know from 2024 is enough cause for concern. Since the October 7th, 2023 massacre in Israel sparked a brutal battle between Hamas and Israel, available metrics nationally and globally show the same pattern:
- Within the U.S., the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) reports a “massive spike” in antisemitic incidents over the last two years, with numbers “exceeding any other annual tally in the past 46 years.” They report 2024 as the “fourth year in a row that antisemitic incidents increased and broke the previous all-time high.” For instance, FBI data in the fall showed that anti-Jewish hate crimes had increased by 63% since 2023.
- Looking internationally, Combat Antisemitism Movement likewise reports “an unprecedented rise in global antisemitism” - with a surprising 107.7% increase in incidents tracked by their Antisemitism Research Center compared to 2023, which had already experienced a “record-breaking 58.6% increase over 2022.” The Combat Antisemitism Movement calls this the “most severe wave of antisemitism since the end of the Second World War.”
Are critiques of Israel being counted as antisemitic?
This mounting hostility is often attributed to emotions generated by the conflict in Israel, which began with public outrage towards Hamas’ vicious attacks on Israeli Jews - but has shifted over time towards frustrations at Israeli war tactics that have wreaked devastation upon Palestinian homes, families and children.
The influence of the war has been significant, but it can be overstated when it comes to the influence on worsening antisemitism. For instance, most countries with large Jewish minorities saw measurable increases in antisemitic hostility in the year preceding the 2023 Hamas attacks.
Nonetheless, the war’s huge relevance highlights one of the major concerns about data tracking - namely, whether incidents of critique against Israel are being counted as antisemitic in a way that would inflate the numbers.
The Anti-Defamation League reports that it “does not include criticism of Israel” in their incident data - and has insisted elsewhere that they are “careful not to conflate general criticism of Israel or anti-Israel activism with antisemitism.”
But the organization draws a line when public rhetoric rises to the level of justifying the Hamas attacks or calls for the destruction of Israel. Since October 7th, the Anti-Defamation League now counts as antisemitism “rallies that include support for Hamas or justify its attacks, calls to ‘globalize the intifada’ or ‘by all means necessary,’ and expressions of anti-Zionism such as the phrases ‘Zionism is terrorism,’ or ‘From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.’”
Critics of the ADL methodology still argue that the organization is too quick to classify legitimate critique of Israel as antisemitic. In a reanalysis of the 2024 ADL report by the magazine Jewish Currents, they pointed to over a thousand incidents they believe were “misclassified as antisemitic” in the 2024 ADL report—all of which were “cases of speech critical of Israel or Zionism.”
For instance, they ask whether it was justified to label as antisemitic phrases such as “respect existence or expect resistance” and “when people are occupied, resistance is justified,” which were flagged 56 times in a 2023 report.
Coming from both the far left and the far right
Whereas antisemitic hostility has historically been associated with the far-right, recent years have found far-left hostility towards Jews surging. According to the Antisemitism Research Center, just over 68% of incidents recorded globally in 2024 (4,329 of 6,326) were linked to far-left ideology - which they now call “the dominant ideological camp of antisemitic incidents.”
However, far-right incidents stand out as “slightly more likely” to involve violence compared to far-left incidents, which tends towards aggressive speech. That includes language such as “settler-colonialism,” “Israeli apartheid,” and “genocide” - reflecting what the Combat Antisemitism Movement describes as “leveraging anticolonial narratives, certain critical theories, and anti-Zionist propaganda to fuel hostility toward the Jewish state and Jewish communities worldwide.”
Marc Soloway, a rabbi in Boulder, Colorado, wrote earlier this year in an open letter to the city council: “Jews in America have mostly felt the threats of antisemitism from the far right in the form of White Supremacy, yet now many of us have experienced hatred, bigotry and intolerance from progressives, those who many of us have considered friends and allies.”
The Antisemitism Research Center reports that 96.4% (4,174 of 4,329) of left-wing antisemitic incidents recorded in 2024 across the world manifested as Israel-related and/or anti-Zionist antisemitism. According to the ADL, a majority (58%) of antisemitic incidents in the U.S. during the same year contained elements related to Israel or Zionism - especially associated with anti-Israel protests.
Competing definitions of ‘antisemitism’
Part of the confusion boils down to competing debates over what qualifies as antisemitism. The Anti-Defamation League relies on the IHRA (International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance) definition - which emphasizes antisemitism as a “certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews” - manifest in both “rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism.”
Some have expressed concern that this definition may be overly broad, allowing legitimate criticisms of Israel or Zionism to be classified as antisemitism - comparable to reasonable differences in perspective about LGBT issues all being classified as “homophobic.”
Others advocate for the Jerusalem Declaration on Antisemitism (JDA), which emphasizes “discrimination, prejudice, hostility or violence against Jews as Jews (or Jewish institutions as Jewish).” This alternative was created by scholars to more narrowly and tightly define antisemitism in a way that more clearly excludes strong critiques of Zionism.
Three types of antisemitic hostility
There are three main categories of antisemitic aggression tracked by ADL and other organizations: (1) harassment directed at individual Jews or Jewish institutions (2) vandalism of Jewish institutions, including Jewish cemeteries and (3) the attempt to physically harm Jews due to antisemitic hatred.
Across the world, the majority of antisemitic incidents according to the Antisemitism Research Center involved some kind of verbal attack - including 74% (1,898 of 2,553) of incidents recorded in the United States and 81% (1,555 of 1,916) of incidents in Western Europe. In total, 78% of the 2024 antisemitic incidents around the world (4,907 of 6,326) centered on verbal attacks.
The remaining incidents were more physical, with 13% (822 of 6,326) involving vandalism and just over 9% (597 of 6,326) involving physical violence or threats.
In the United States, physical assaults according to the ADL increased by 21% in 2024 to 196 incidents that harmed 250 victims. U.S. antisemitic vandalism increased by 20% in 2024 to 2,606 incidents.
Similar to global trends, the majority of antisemitic incidents in the U.S. involved verbal harassment, including 6,552 incidents. There is good reason to believe these numbers substantially undercount the real figures, though, since only an estimated 66% of hate speech gets reported to law enforcement, with 78% of agencies reporting their numbers to the FBI (and 79% of cities claiming there were “zero hate crimes in their city.”)
‘Violence against all faiths is rising’
“If current trends continue,” warned professor Uriya Shavit last year, Head of The Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry, the curtain will descend on the ability to lead Jewish lives in the West – to wear a Star of David, attend synagogues and community centers, send kids to Jewish schools, frequent a Jewish club on campus, or speak Hebrew.“
Shavit added: “With bomb threats against synagogues becoming a daily occurrence, Jewish existence in the West is forced to fortify itself, and the more it does so, the more the sense of security and normalcy is undermined.”
A U.S. News poll last year shows two-thirds of students enrolled at elite U.S. schools saying antisemitism was a problem on their campus. And a fall survey of adult Jews in the U.S. by the American Jewish Committee likewise found 93 percent of respondents saying antisemitism was at least somewhat of a problem, and about the same number expressing a belief that it had increased in recent years.
In an analysis of the Colorado attack, Georgetown University professor Bruce Hoffman highlights the even larger context where “violence against all faiths is rising.” He cites the Council on American-Islamic Relations’ report of historic numbers of anti-Muslim and anti-Arab incidents - along with CatholicVote finding hundreds of instances of vandalism in the U.S since 2020, including more serious attacks on Catholic churches.
“To stop it,” Hoffman argues about any such violence against people of faith, “our society must take more seriously not just bomb throwing, but the messages that light the fuse.”