Reports and Emblematic Examples of Antisemitic Hate Speech and Violence Since October 7

A residential building in Buenos Aires was vandalized with a Star of David symbol on October 31.

The Australian Jewish Association reported that protesters shouted “gas the Jews” and “f*ck the Jews” outside the Sydney Opera House on October 9 at a protest against the lighting of the building in blue and white in solidarity with the Jewish community.

As also reported by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ): 

• on October 10, in Melbourne, a rabbi and his 8-year-old son were subjected to death threats on the street by four men in a car who yelled “F*ck… Jew… pigs… die…” at them. 

• On October 12, ECAJ, based in Sydney, received an Instagram message reading, “We are coming for you soon, from western Sydney.”

• On October 14th, 20-30 members of the neo-Nazi National Socialist Network (NSN), displayed a banner reading “Expose Jewish Power” in front of a train station in Melbourne, boarded a train, handed out materials and asked passengers if they were Jewish. People affiliated with NSN posted picture of the incident and propagating the antisemitic Great Replacement conspiracy theory and on the social media platform Gab, and asserted “Expose Jewish power because Jews slander gentile nationalists as baby-killers and terrorists, all the while Israel fires a missile into a Palestinian hospital killing hundreds of women and children.”

The Antisemitism Reporting Office of the Jewish Community of Vienna reported that it verified 76 antisemitic incidents from October 7-19, more than three times as many incidents as were reported in all of 2022, including three incidents in which Jewish children had been threatened at school.

On October 31, the Jewish cemetery in Vienna was desecrated with swastikas and the word “Hitler” and a fire was lit in a ceremonial hall.

Police in several Canadian cities recorded significantly greater numbers of  antisemitic incidents between October 7 and October 25 than during the same period in previous years, with 38 reports of antisemitic incidents recorded in Montreal, 15 in Toronto and  29 in Ottawa.

On November 3, a rabbi in Ottawa received a threatening call from a man who told him that Jews are Nazis who need to be killed.

The Congregation Beth Tikvah synagogue and the Federation CJA office Montreal were targeted in suspected arson attacks on November 7. 

A synagogue in Concepcion was vandalized with spray-painted graffiti reading, “Free Palestine, overthrow Zionism” on October 18.

Signs displayed at a “March for Palestine” protest in Santiago on November 4 included one reading “death to Israel, f*ck the Jews.”

On October 10, in a program on “uncovering the Israel element of US elections in history,” the state broadcaster China Central Television (CCTV) alleged that “Jews who represent three percent of US population control 70 percent of its wealth.” The hashtag “the 3% Jewish population in the U.S. controls over 70% of American wealth” reportedly became one of the top trending topics on the heavily censored online platform Weibo thereafter.

In remarks made October 16 on X (formerly twitter) denying that his characterization of Gaza as “Auschwitz” and of Israel as “Nazis” was antisemitic, Colombian President Gustavo Petro accused the “oligarchy and press that attacks me,” of being “with Hitler.” 

On November 5, France’s interior minister said authorities had registered 1,040 antisemitic incidents since October 7.

Since October 7, dozens of instances have been reported in which Stars of David and antisemitic symbols have been spraypainted on buildings around Paris and its suburbs in a manner reminiscent of Nazi persecution of Jews. Many Jewish residents have reportedly curtailed their activities.

On October 17, the home of a family with a Hebrew surname in Grenoble was burglarized by assailants who wrote death threats against Jews, insults, swastikas and "Free Palestine" on the walls. 

On October 19, the door of an elderly Jewish couple’s apartment in Paris was doused with gasoline and set on fire.

A stadium in Carcassonne was reportedly vandalized with graffiti reading, “Killing Jews is a duty.”

On October 21, a synagogue in Lyon was reportedly vandalized with Arabic graffiti reading, “Victory to our brothers in Gaza” and “Glorious Gaza.” 

On October 31, a group of people on a Paris metro shouted back and forth: “F*** the Jews and f*** your mother. Long live Palestine… We are Nazis and proud.”

On November 4, a young Jewish woman was stabbed in the stomach by an attacker at her home in Lyon, the door of which also was vandalized with a graffitied swastika.

The Federal Association of Departments for Research and Information on Antisemitism (RIAS) documented 202 verified antisemitic incidents from October 7 to 15, an increase of at least 240% from the 59 antisemitic incidents documented during the same period in 2022. Among the reported incidents were:

• In at least 10 cases, residential buildings, including apartment buildings where Jews reside in Berlin and North Rhine-Westphalia were daubed with Stars of David, among other symbols, and thus “marked” as Jewish in a threatening act reminiscent of the Nazi era. 
• On October 7, a gathering of people in Kassel mourning Hamas’s attack in Israel was threatened by a passer-by who warned that what happened there [in Israel] would soon happen to Germany.
• On October 10, a pub in Dortmond hung a Palestinian flag and banner above its door reading “Israel is our misfortune,” an obvious reference to the official slogan of the Nazi-era antisemitic newspaper Der Stürmer.

On October 18, two assailants with their faces covered threw two Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in the center of Berlin in a suspected arson attack.

On October 24, two days after chairman of the Green Party Omid Nouripour condemned antisemitism in Berlin, a Green party office in Wolfenbuettel was vandalized with graffiti reading “Jewish pigs.”

A mural at a Holocaust memorial in Thessaloniki was vandalized on October 23 with the words “Jews=Nazis” and “Free Palestine.”

Participants in a pro-Palestinian rally in Milan on October 21 reportedly chanted “Open the borders, so we can kill the Zionists. Open the borders so we can kill the Jews."

Graffiti calling for the murder of Jews was found in a bathroom of a nightclub in the former Jewish quarter of Milan on October 24.

At least four “pietre d’inciampo,” or “stumbling stones” in front of the former homes of Holocaust victims in Rome have been vandalized between October and November 7, including two that were spray painted black on October 30.

The Utrecht apartment of a Syrian Jewish refugee who ran the Amsterdam Marathon on October 15 wearing Ukrainian, Israeli, and Palestinian flags was vandalized with a swastika and Star of David on October 18.

Jewish graves and a menorah in the cemetery in Managua were vandalized with Nazi and pro-Palestinian symbols on October 23.

On Oct. 27, Pakistani senator Afnan Ullah Khan, a member of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif's Pakistan Muslim League (Nawaz) party, who has been a member of the Senate of Pakistan since March 2021, reportedly posted an image of Adolf Hitler on X (formerly known as Twitter) and wrote, “At least now the world know [sic], why he did, what he did.”

The Kandoorie synagogue in Porto, Portugal, was vandalized on October 11 with graffiti saying, “Free Palestine” and “End Israel Apartheid.”

On November 1, the word “blood” was spray-painted on a wall in Lisbon under a Star of David display.

A participant in a pro-Palestinian rally in Warsaw on October 21 displayed a sign reading “keep the world clean,” and depicting the Star of David in a garbage can, invoking the antisemitic trope that Jews are dirty. It has subsequently been reproduced by participants in multiple “pro-Palestine” protests across the globe. 

On October 28, a crowd gathered outside a hotel in the Daghestani city of Khasavyurt after Telegram channels reported a person “outwardly resembling a citizen of Israel” was staying there; the hotel later posted a sign saying Israeli citizens and Jews were not allowed to enter or stay there.

On October 29, vandals started a fire and spray-painted “Death to Jews” on a wall of a Jewish cultural center under construction in Nalchik, the capital of the Kabardino-Balkaria region. 

On October 29, a mob at the International Airport in Makhachkala, the capital of the Daghestan region, sought to attack Jewish passengers on an incoming flight from Tel Aviv that was transiting to Moscow, rushing the landing field, climbing onto the aircraft, and surrounding one man and demanding his identification. One participant held a sign that read “Child killers have no place in Dagestan.” A Telegram channel linked to Russia's security services reportedly said that about 1,500 people took part in the mob. Reports indicated that that 20 people were injured, two seriously, and that Russian authorities had identified 150 individuals involved and arrested 60.  

An October 30 statement by the South African Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) condemning Israel’s conduct in Gaza also attacked a lay leader and Vice President of the South African Jewish Board of Deputies (SAJBD) who had criticized South Africa’s foreign minister’s decisions to directly communicate with Hamas and travel to Iran in the days following the October 7 attacks by name, calling him “unethical” and said he had “repeated discredited information related to the beheading of children in Israel,” which it called one of an “arsenal of dehumanisation tactics used to justify a ‘by any means necessary’ approach to dealing with Hamas” and for having “misled” the South African public in a “libelous” way.

On October 20, a protester outside the Israeli embassy in Seoul displayed a sign reading, in English, “Bring back Hitler, the ultimate problem solver.”

The President of the Federation of Jewish Communities of Spain (FCJE) has characterized recent weeks as “the greatest escalation of antisemitism in Spain in recent times.” 

FCJE reported that on October 18, pro-Palestinian demonstrators tried to reach the door of the Or Zaruah synagogue in Melilla, an autonomous zone of Spain in North Africa that borders Morocco, shouting “murderers,” and that several people broke into shops run by Jews who were intimidated and insulted during the demonstration, among other incidents.

The outer door of a synagogue in Madrid was defaced with graffiti reading “Free Palestine” and a crossed-out Star of David  on October 8. 

On October 17, hundreds of men protesting Israel’s campaign in Gaza, and particularly reacting to later-debunked claims by Hamas alleging that Israeli forces had carried out an air strike against Al Ahli Arab Baptist Hospital, set fire to, vandalized, and damaged the walls of a Jewish holy site in Al-Hammah, instilling fear in some members of the country’s small Jewish community.

Following the outbreak of conflict between Israel and Hamas, Tunisian parliamentarians strengthened the text of and debated a bill that would have criminalized with imprisonment “normalization” with Israel, defined as deliberatecommunication, cooperation or entry into commercial relationships, “directly or indirectly,” with Israeli natural or legal persons, with the exception of Palestinians with Israeli nationality, an initiative which further isolated and stigmatized Tunisia’s Jewish community.

On October 17, the pro-government far-right media outlet Yeni Akit reportedly targeted Jewish Turks with the front-page headline "Deport the Zionist Servants from Citizenship," falsely claiming that all Jews in turkey have dual Israeli citizenship, and hashtags such as #TürkiyeYahudileriVatandaşlıktanAtılsın (Expel Turkish Jews from citizenship) have reportedly been used to target Jewish people online.

Turkish politician Suleyman Sezen, an AKP city councilman in Atakum District, Samsun city, in a statement that was posted on BirGün Daily on YouTube (Turkey) on October 19, quoted Hitler as having said: “You will curse me for every Jew I did not kill,” and he added: “I pray for God to bestow mercy and grace upon Hitler,” and “once the world is purified of the Jews, there will be peace.”

The owner of a book store in Istanbul hung a sign outside saying “Jews not allowed” on October 27.

A synagogue in Izmir was defaced with graffiti that read “Murderer Israel” on October 28.

The NGO Community Security trust (CSt) reported that between October 7 and 31 it recorded at least 893 antisemitic incidents across the UK, the highest ever total reported to CST across a 25-day period since it began recording incidents in 1984 and an increase in anti-Jewish hate acts of 609% compared to the same period in 2022. These included 40 assaults; 60 incidents of damage and desecration of Jewish property; 94 direct threats; and 697 instances of abusive behavior. 64 events related to universities and 55 occurred in connection with schools.

The Metropolitan police said 218 antisemitic offences were recorded in London from 1 October to 18 October this year, compared with 15 in the same period last year.

An assailant called a Jewish person walking to a synagogue in London on October 8, 2023 a “dirty Jew” and said, “no wonder you're all getting raped.”

A car slowed down outside a synagogue before the occupants of the vehicle shouted “Kill Jews” and “Death to Israel” while waving a Palestinian flag.

The President of the Union of Jewish Students (UJS) has said he has received death threats and students at UK universities have recounted being assaulted, for example for wearing a Star of David necklace.

In an October 20 Friday sermon at Mohammadi Masjid in Birmingham, U.K., which was also posted on YouTube, British Imam Abu Ibrahim Hussnayn said that the Jews have a history of oppression, but today they are the oppressors, that the Jews today are committing atrocities worse than those committed against them by Pharaoh, and that Jews have no shame, no limits, no morality, and no fear of Allah.

On November 4, individuals who had participated in a pro-Palestinian rally in London subsequently surrounded and harassed a visibly identifiable Jewish man, including by ripping his yarmulke off and accusing him of “killing babies.”

ADL recorded a total of 312 antisemitic incidents between Oct. 7 and 23, 190 of which were directly linked to the war in Israel and Gaza, and 109 of which were expressions of explicit or strong implicit support for Hamas and/or violence against Jews in Israel at anti-Israel rallies.

The NYPD reported having registered 51 hate crimes between October 9 and 23, in 30 of which the victims were Jews. The hate crimes primarily consisted of assaults, aggravated harassment, and vandalism involving swastikas.

Three synagogues in Utah, including Congregation Kol Ami in Salt Lake City, received emailed bomb threats on October 8 saying that Jewish people deserved to die.

On October 11, a teaching assistant at Stanford University asked Jewish and Israeli students to identify themselves, separated them from the class and told them to stand in the back of the room, saying, “This is what Israel does to the Palestinians.” 

The iconic 2nd Avenue Deli in New York City was defaced with a swastika on October 17. the following day, similar graffiti messages were found across the street.

On October 18, a Jewish woman reported she was punched in the face at Grand Central terminal in New York City by an assailant who said he hit her because she was Jewish.

On October 18, a subway station was vandalized with the words “kill the Jews.”

On October 25, Pro-Palestinian student protesters who entered a Cooper Union building targeted Jewish students who were studying in the library, banging on windows opposite them and a locked door to the library while chanting “Globalize the Intifada.”

A series of posts on a student website called Greekrank made on October 29 threatened violence against Jewish students at Cornell University in Ithaca. The posts urged people to kill Jews on campus and said that they needed to be “eliminated.” The Cornell Center for Jewish Living was specifically singled out for destruction in the posts.

On October 30, two restaurants, food trucks, and signs in Montauk, New York, were defaced with graffitied swastikas, [sic] “Jeden die,” and “Free Palestine.”

An alley behind an apartment complex in Beverly Hills where many residents are Jewish was vandalized with graffiti reading [sic] “Kill Jewss” on October 30.

An iconic Jewish deli in the Beverly Grove area of Los Angeles was vandalized with antisemitic graffiti, including statements such as “how many dead in the name of greed?” on November 1.

On November 1, Bucknell University in Pennsylvania disclosed in a letter to students that a swastika had been found in a residence hall on campus and that the incident had been investigated. 

On November 6, a participant in a pro-Palestinian protest in Ventura County, California, yelled antisemitic chants including “Hitler didn’t want you, Hitler should've smashed you,” at pro-Israel counter-demonstrators shortly before an altercation in which a Jewish man was fatally assaulted.

Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) leader Khalid Saeed Batarfi released an Arabic-language video message on October 29 praising Hamas’s October 7 attack saying: “We call on our Muslim brethren everywhere, in the West and the East, in Muslim and non-Muslim lands, to kill every Jew, American, and British citizen, for by Allah those will never be deterred without similar blessed acts... The world today is an arena for Muslims’ operations against Jews, the Americans, British, and French citizens, and all who stood with the Jews and the Crusaders against the Islamic ummah,” and described Muslims’ battle with the Jews and the Christians as a “battle of faith.”

The Chairman of the Houthi Supreme Political Council reportedly said “Only jihad for the sake of Allah to liberate Palestine and its sanctities will stop the Jews in their crimes and ambitions” in remarks in Sana'a on October 22. The militant group, whose slogan is “Death to America, Death to Israel, curse the Jews and victory to Islam,” “declared war” on Israel on November 1.

The Institute for Strategic Dialogue reported that in the three days after Hamas’ attack, the absolute number of antisemitic comments on conflict-related YouTube videos increased by 4963%, when compared to the previous three days. This increase continued after the first three days after the attack, with an additional 37.2% increase in the number of antisemitic comments from 10-12 October compared to 7-9 October. The common themes reflected in antisemitic comments included: dehumanizing language, often used with reference to Jewish people, including slur words; comparing Israelis or Zionists to Nazis, and their actions to those of Hitler; conspiracy theories including that Jewish people are “Khazars” or not descendants of Israelites and thereby “fake Jews,” feeding into the narrative that Jews are a European “problem” forced onto Palestinians in the aftermath of the Holocaust, both denying Jewish rights to self-determination and re-surfacing “othering” narratives of Jews; that Jews control political, media and financial institutions, applied to the conflict, Israel’s perceived control of the US government’s political and financial response; the deicide myth (that Jews killed Jesus) was used to justify and celebrate Jewish deaths, alongside Black Hebrew Israelite language such as the “Synagogue of Satan”; claims that Hamas’ attack was a “false flag” performed by Israel for ulterior motives which might include political power, financial benefit or to lay the groundwork for an offensive in Gaza.

In addition to analyzing YouTube comments, ISD identified a high volume of antisemitic content on 4chan, which provides anonymous users with space to share explicit and often violent antisemitic narratives and imagery.

The emblematic incidents documented above are reflective of a very troubling pattern: antisemitic incidents are occurring at an alarmingly high frequency and with a broad geographic reach. This is a cause for alarm for numerous reasons, among them that Jews and Jewish communities are experiencing heightened fear and insecurity and significant restraints on their ability to participate on an equal basis in society. A further risk is that antisemitic attitudes are quickly becoming further “normalized” and more deeply entrenched in all levels of society in the many countries where these incidents are occurring. In this context, prompt and unambiguous condemnation of identity-based hatred targeting Jews, by leaders at the international, national, and local levels, is not only warranted, but urgently needed to prevent any further harm.