Europe Faces Rising Antisemitism, EU Rights Agency Survey Finds

The EU’s Fundamental Rights Agency (FRA) has published a survey of more than 8,000 Jewish people in 13 EU countries, including Germany and France. According to the survey, 96% of respondents said they had encountered antisemitism in their daily lives. FRA director Sirpa Rautio warned that Europe was facing a “wave of antisemitism,” which she said was driven partly by the conflict in the Middle East. She said this was severely limiting the ability of Jewish people in EU countries to “live in safety and with dignity.”

The survey covered participants’ experiences in the year before it was carried out. Fieldwork took place in the first half of 2023, before the Hamas attacks of 7 October and Israel’s military campaign in Gaza that followed. The FRA nonetheless said it had recorded a dramatic rise in reported antisemitic attacks since the Gaza war began. The war was sparked when gunmen from Hamas and other Palestinian groups attacked southern Israel, killing about 1,200 people and taking 251 others hostage. Israel’s retaliatory attacks have since killed 38,295 people in Gaza, according to the territory’s Hamas-run health ministry. The FRA said its research over several years had found that antisemitism tends to increase in times of tension in the Middle East.

Among the survey’s findings, 75% of respondents said they felt held responsible for the actions of the Israeli government because they are Jewish. While 90% said they had encountered antisemitism online, the FRA said “antisemitic harassment and violence mostly take place in streets, parks, or shops.” More than half of those surveyed said they were concerned for their own safety or that of their family, and 76% said they hid their Jewish identity at least occasionally.

The FRA also collected responses from 12 Jewish organisations in January and February of this year. These groups reported a dramatic increase in antisemitic attacks across all surveyed countries, including personal harassment, intimidation and violence. In Austria and Sweden, antisemitic incidents rose by more than 400% in October to December 2023 compared with the same period in 2022. In Denmark, authorities had reported nine antisemitic incidents in 2022, a figure that rose to 121 in 2023.

The FRA said safety concerns and the protection of Jewish people and institutions had become urgent. It called on governments to do more to fund the security needs of Jewish communities, including at schools and synagogues, a call that reflects protecting the vulnerable (Psalm 82:3). Ms Rautio said: “We need to build on existing laws and strategies to protect communities from all forms of hate and intolerance, online as well as offline.”

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