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Anti-Israel mob forces Jewish students to evacuate: ‘Extremely frightening experience’
UC Berkeley students Daniel Conway and Vida Keyvanfar reveal what they witnessed on ‘America Reports.’
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Since the Hamas terror massacre of Israeli Jews Oct. 7, the U.S. has been hit with record levels of antisemitic incidents. While authorities are getting to grips with how to effectively deal with it, Western democracies are also dealing with an explosion of antisemitism not witnessed since the Holocaust.
Across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom has been rocked by unprecedented antisemitism.
“In the 68 days inclusive between the Hamas terror attack on Israel (Oct. 7) and Wednesday, Dec. 13, CST recorded at least 2,093 antisemitic incidents across the U.K.,” according to the Community Security Trust (CST), the organization responsible for the security of British Jews.
“This is the highest ever total reported to CST across a sixty-eight-day period. CST has been recording antisemitic incidents since 1984.”
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Pro-Palestinian Muslim protesters hold a banner that says, “From the river to the sea,” in London Dec. 9 2023. (Andy Soloman/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
“I think people are feeling tense and nervous, particularly with marches taking place every Saturday,” Jake Wallis Simons, editor-in-chief of the London-based Jewish Chronicle, told Fox News Digital from England.
Mass pro-Palestinian marches have blanketed the heart of London.
“The marches had a lot of antisemitism and criminality in them, and there are placards supporting Hamas,” Wallis Simons said.
Former British Home Secretary Suella Braverman decried the mass protests as “hate marches” and wanted to ban the mass antisemitic spectacles. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak, fired the outspoken Braverman after her calls for the need to rein in public Jew hatred. Braverman accused the police of double standards at pro-Palestinian marches in an unauthorized newspaper article, according to Reuters.
“Jewish children are being told to hide their school blazers, Jewish students are terrified on campus, synagogues are guarded, kosher shops are being attacked, business owners are being threatened”
The demonstrations in the U.K. have been largely populated by leftists and British Muslims.
“The police are not cracking down on antisemitism,” said Wallis Simons. He noted that the police are claiming that “if they enforce the law, it will lead to disorder.” He stressed the absurdity of the police reasoning because “that allows space for antisemitic hate to go on. There have been some arrests.”
People attend a campaign against antisemitism rally outside New Scotland Yard in central London, seeking police action amid a rise in antisemitic incidents. (Jordan Pettitt/PA Images via Getty Images)
He termed a late February march outside parliament, where the antisemitic slogan “from the river to the sea,” was projected on Big Ben, a “real expression of mob power and intimidated politicians.”
The full slogan, “From the river to sea, Palestine will be free,” is widely interpreted to mean the abolition of the Jewish state and its replacement with a Palestinian nation.
Antisemitism Exposed
Protesters walk across Vauxhall Bridge during a pro-Palestinian protest in London Nov. 11, 2023. (AP Photo/Alberto Pezzali)
Just last week The Board of Deputies of British Jews wrote on X about the election of pro-Hamas and firebrand socialist politician George Galloway to Parliament.
“George Galloway is a demagogue and conspiracy theorist, who has brought the politics of division and hate to every place he has ever stood for Parliament. His election is a dark day for the Jewish community in this country, and for British politics in general.”
“This is for Gaza,” Galloway said of his special election victory.
Antisemitic incidents have risen in the U.K. since the Hamas terror attacks on Israel Oct 7. (The Community Security Trust)
“Jewish children are being told to hide their school blazers, Jewish students are terrified on campus, synagogues are guarded, kosher shops are being attacked, business owners are being threatened,” a spokesperson for Campaign Against Antisemitism in the United Kingdom told Fox News Digital.
Antisemitism in the UK has hit record levels since the Hamas terror attacks against Israel on Oct. 7, with almost weekly protests against the Jewish state taking place in London and other UK cities. Courtesy: Campaign Against Antisemitism/@antisemitism/X
“The effect is that, as our polling shows, a majority of Jewish people in this country are afraid to show their Jewishness in public, and we are aware of some Jews who have left the country altogether. This is not the tolerant Britain that we cherish It is a Britain succumbing to a racist mob.”
“The situation for Jews in Britain is desperate.”
The spokesperson for the Campaign Against Antisemitism added, “At the epicenter of this societal disaster are the weekly anti-Israel marches, which feature antisemitic signage, genocidal rhetoric and intimidation. They have made London a no-go zone for Jews. Brave officers are outnumbered and cannot properly police these marches, which therefore continue to infect our public discourse. Our country is at a tipping point. The situation for Jews in Britain is desperate.”
The Hamas terrorist movement’s lethal antisemitic ideology has entered into many walks of life in advanced democratic countries across the world.
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“Hamas is losing on the battlefield, but its narrative was successfully exported from those tunnels [in the Gaza Strip] to Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Australia, the U.S. and Canada, to name just a few. The scope and nature of Jew hatred has reached epic levels,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the LA-based Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Fox News Digital.
“The largest mass murder of Jews after the war [World War II and the Holocaust] leads to the largest worldwide antisemitic campaign,” author and journalist Henryk M. Broder, a leading German expert on antisemitism, said in a recent interview. “That can’t be explained with logic.”
While the United Kingdom is widely viewed as one of the ground zeroes of the mushrooming antisemitic movement, America’s northern neighbor, Canada, has been engulfed by probably the worst outbreak of antisemitism in its country’s history.
“There have been multiple instances of Jewish day schools in Montreal being hit with gunfire, public calls for the killing of Israelis, vandalized homes and synagogues, antisemitic graffiti, large-scale antisemitic disruptions on our university campuses and appalling instances of antisemitic activities outside the country’s most well-known Jewish-founded hospital, among countless other things,” Casey Babb told Fox News Digital.
Babb teaches courses on terrorism and international security at the Norman Paterson School of International Affairs in Ottawa.
“…this may be the most antisemitic time in our country’s history. I’d go as far as suggesting Canada, for a variety of reasons, has become one of the most hostile nations in the West for Jews”
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This image made from undated bodycam video footage taken by a downed Hamas terrorist and released by Israel Defense Forces shows a Hamas terrorist walking around a residential neighborhood at an undisclosed location in southern Israel. (Israel Defense Forces via AP)
“Statistically, hate crimes in Canada have increased north of 132%, with the vast majority of those crimes targeting the Jewish community,” Babb added. “Indeed, this may be the most antisemitic time in our country’s history. I’d go as far as suggesting Canada, for a variety of reasons, has become one of the most hostile nations in the West for Jews.”
Just last week, hundreds of anti-Israel protesters surrounded the Montreal Holocaust Museum and blocked access to a group of Israeli army reservists who were slated to speak. The antisemitic mob reportedly chanted “Death to Israel, death to the Jews.”
Germany is another European ground zero of the post-Oct. 7 antisemitic movement. Last month, the country’s premier film festival, Berlinale, turned into an anti-Israel hate festival, according to Israel’s government and a number of German newspapers.
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The filmmakers termed the Mideast’s only democracy, Israel, an “apartheid” state and accused Jerusalem of carrying out a genocide against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip.
Hamas’ mass murder, systematic rape of Israelis and taking of over 130 hostages still held by terror groups in Gaza were nonissues for the packed film audience that cheered the delegitimization of the Jewish state in the capital city, Berlin, that planned the Holocaust.
Reports noted that Germany’s federal culture minister, Green Party politician Claudia Roth, and Berlin’s mayor, Kai Wegner, from the Christian Democratic Union Party, were caught on camera applauding the anti-Israel agitation.
“You see the unleashing into the mainstream of not just antisemitism, but the Hamas narrative, which turns reality on its head,” Cooper said.
An Israeli girl captured by Hamas terrorists and taken into the Gaza strip. (FOX News Digital )
The Hamas Covenant calls for the genocide of the Jews. According to Article 7 of the Covenant, “The Day of Judgment will not come about until Moslems fight Jews and kill them. Then, the Jews will hide behind rocks and trees, and the rocks and trees will cry out: ‘O Moslem, there is a Jew hiding behind me, come and kill him.”
Israel and experts on Jew hatred argue the genocide charge should be attributed to Hamas. Israel has launched surgical-style urban warfare to root out Hamas terrorists in the Gaza Strip.
Ron Prosor, Israel’s ambassador to Germany, who previously served as his country’s envoy to the U.N., wrote on X about the Berlinale, “Under the guise of freedom of expression and art, anti-Semitic and anti-Israel rhetoric is celebrated. You don’t need seven professors to state the obvious: this is blatant anti-Semitic discourse.”
“We have seen the biggest antisemitic wave in Denmark since 1943”
Critics say the problem of state-sponsored antisemitism has repeatedly played out in Germany, where the Berlinale receives generous state funding.
In January, the German taxpayer-funded University of Tübingen hosted a speaker, Michael Blume, who two German courts ruled can be called antisemitic. Blume is the civil servant in charge of fighting antisemitsm in the state of Baden-Württemberg. He blamed Israel’s government for the Hamas massacre and said Israel is ostensibly preventing the fight against antisemitism because the Jewish state opposes “renewable energies.”
Blume didn’t respond to press queries.
Antisemitism has also engulfed Denmark.
“We have seen the biggest antisemitic wave in Denmark since 1943,” when Denmark was occupied by Nazi Germany, Henri Goldstein, head of the 1,800-strong Jewish Community, said in late February.
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In Norway, Oslo Chief Rabbi Joav Melchior echoed the comments of experts and leaders of Jewish communities across the globe that the levels of antisemitism have not been seen since the Holocaust.
“It manifests in statements made against Israel, Zionists and Jews — comments that were not made in the past and would not have been accepted in public discourse without a very strong reaction,” he told the Israeli news outlet Ynet.
France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish community of 440,000, saw a soaring increase of Jew hatred, with 1,676 antisemitic acts in 2023, compared to 436 in 2022.
Jerusalem has long viewed Norwegian governments as strongholds of anti-Israeli policies. Ynet noted that at the Cairo Summit for Peace two weeks after Hamas kidnapped over 240 hostages, including Americans, the Scandinavian country’s foreign minister, Espen Barth Eide, was “the only Western foreign minister who condemned Israel without calling for the release of hostages held in Gaza.”
The French media reported in late January that a report from the Council of Jewish Institutions in France (CRIF) said, “We are witnessing a rejuvenation of the perpetrators of anti-Semitic acts. Schools are no longer a sanctuary of the Republic.”
French police regulate thousands who gathered for a march against antisemitism in Paris Nov. 12, 2023. (AP Photo/Christophe Ena)
France, home to Europe’s largest Jewish community of 440,000, saw a soaring increase of Jew hatred, with 1,676 antisemitic acts in 2023, compared to 436 in 2022. The Council of Jewish Institutions in France said 25% of the antisemitic acts were “calls to murder” Jews and a third glorified Hamas’ ideology of jihad.
“The explosion of antisemitism globally points to a failure of leadership in higher education, the media of record and in government policy, especially in democratic countries,” said Charles Asher Small, director of the Institute for the U.S.-based Study of Global Antisemitism & Policy (ISGAP).
“For the past several decades, the threat posed by anti-American and anti-democratic social movements has not been addressed, and we keep kicking the can down the road.”
Meanwhile, Rabbi Cooper warned, “If not met with a strong, definitive response from those in power, you will see it [antisemitism] spreading to elementary schools.”
A close-up image depicting the Jewish religious symbol of the star of David inside a synagogue. (iStock)
Traditionally, Ireland has been classified as one of the most hostile European countries toward the Jewish state, according to Israeli diplomats. Irish discrimination against Jews appeared on the basketball court in February when the Irish women’s basketball team refused to shake hands with Israeli opponents because of the war in Gaza. The Israeli team defeated Ireland 87-57.
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Spain, with a tiny Jewish population of 45,000 out of a total population of over 48 million, has also been embroiled in rising antisemitism. In October, The Jewish Chronicle reported a synagogue in Barcelona canceled events.
“We’re scared, particularly for our sons and daughters,” a Jewish resident of Barcelona told El Periodico. “Antisemitism is in the air.”
Maxo Benalal, secretary general of the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain, said soaring Spanish antisemitism was “truly terrifying.”
Benjamin Weinthal reports on Israel, Iran, Syria, Turkey and Europe. You can follow Benjamin on Twitter @BenWeinthal.