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A Florida sheriff is on the warpath against neo-Nazi ‘scumbags’ who want him dead
(JTA) – After hate groups in his county on Florida’s East coast projected antisemitic messages onto the Daytona International Speedway, the local sheriff delivered a press conference with one simple message: He’d had enough.
“We put up their photos, talked about their arrest records, and let everybody know what a bunch of reprehensible thugs were in our community, and what they were up to,” Sheriff Mike Chitwood told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency about the February press conference. Standing with local Jewish, interfaith and minority group representatives, the sheriff had announced he would be coming after the “scumbags” who did this.
“And after that,” he recalled, “all hell broke loose.”
The group that had made its presence known in Volusia County was the Goyim Defense League, one of the country’s most prominent antisemitic organizations, known for harassing worshippers at synagogues and papering neighborhoods with fliers hawking anti-Jewish conspiracies.
The movement’s leaders recently relocated to the area from California, and they had chosen the Daytona 500, a major NASCAR race that draws more than 100,000 people to the speedway, to make their antisemitic presence known. They didn’t like that the sheriff was now effectively declaring war on them.
Online after the press conference, several men started making death threats against Chitwood, even harassing his daughter and sending SWAT teams to his parents’ house. Antisemitic groups began planning to hold a public demonstration to oppose him specifically, which Chitwood’s intelligence determined was set for this past weekend in Ormond Beach.
So Chitwood fought back. Last week, thanks in part to his corralling, three men in three different states — California, Connecticut and New Jersey — were arrested and charged with making online death threats against him. Two of the three have already been extradited to Volusia County.
Volusia County Sheriff Michael Chitwood (right) thanks residents who turned up to counter-protest a canceled demonstration by a neo-Nazi group in Ormond Beach, Florida, April 22, 2023. (Nadia Zomorodian, courtesy of Volusia County Sheriff)
On Saturday the sheriff went to the airport to personally “welcome” one of the men. He hopes to send a message to hate groups more generally that he intends to “keep up the heat” so that they know they will face resistance from law enforcement if they attempt any public demonstrations: “I think that makes it a little bit harder to peddle your wares.”
Amid a national climate of rising antisemitism, one vexing question has been how to tackle antisemitic activity that is trollish but not violent. While European authorities have prosecuted Holocaust denial and other antisemitic sentiments expressed in social media posts, U.S. law is less expansive about what kind of online posts represent criminal activity. Meanwhile, the Goyim Defense League’s most frequent activities — flier drops, banner displays and public demonstrations — make up the fastest-growing type of antisemitic incidents in the United States, according to the Anti-Defamation League, but they do not always violate the law. A citation for littering in Wisconsin last year was the first known charge in the United States related to the Goyim Defense League’s distribution of antisemitic materials.
The issue is especially acute in Florida, where the populations of Jews and avowed antisemites are both growing. Chitwood suspects the state’s rising Jewish population is one of the reasons why white supremacists have also flocked to the area, along with Florida’s relaxed gun laws.
In this environment, Chitwood’s outspokenness and forceful commitment to eradicating antisemitism — in a county with a relatively small number of Jews — has set a new tone. Raised in a law-enforcement family in Philadelphia — his father was a prominent police officer whose biography chronicles his own battle against “scumbags” — Chitwood speaks in a tough clip peppered with colorful insults directed at his white supremacist opponents (“these clowns,” “little sissies,” “ugly faces”). His passion on the issue is evident when he talks about his desire to be “standing in for John Q. Citizen,” or “some poor son-of-a-gun that’s going to synagogue.” He’s still green enough on the issue that he frequently confuses the Anti-Defamation League with the “JDL,” or Jewish Defense League — a radical violent splinter group of Jewish extremists.
Chitwood has garnered national attention for his actions, as well as the respect of the Jewish community.
“This sheriff is not like all the others, in a sense,” said Oren Segal, vice president of the ADL’s Center on Extremism. “He’s taking different methods and putting himself out there and showing what one type of response can be.”
Rob Lennick, director of the Jewish Federation of Volusia and Flagler Counties, is one of Chitwood’s local allies. The federation is known locally for running several charitable programs, including food pantries, meant to reach people in need across the entire community, and Chitwood has a good relationship with them.
Lennick praised Chitwood for taking “a very strong forward position against these neo-Nazis, against these white supremacist groups coming to our community.” (Lennick arrived in Volusia County last year after leaving the Jewish Federation of New Mexico, which collapsed after employees accused him of misconduct.)
Counter-protesters at a planned neo-Nazi demonstration in Ormond Beach, Florida, thank Volusia County Sheriff Michael Chitwood “for standing against antisemitism,” April 22, 2023. Chitwood has had white supremacists who have threatened him online arrested and extradited to his county. (Nadia Zomorodian, courtesy of Volusia County Sheriff)
In the end, the planned neo-Nazi demonstration against Chitwood on Saturday never took place — though a large group of what the sheriff described as “professional counter-protesters” did show up, flying joint American and Israeli flags and thanking him for standing up to antisemitism. Walking among that interfaith crowd, many of whom had traveled from outside the county to be there, was profound for Chitwood. The experience “was very, very humbling,” he said. “I don’t think I’ve wrapped my brain around it yet.”
Segal declined to comment on the degree to which Chitwood’s office has liaised with the ADL. But he praised Chitwood’s outspokenness, and said he considered it a form of “allyship.”
“It’s easy to speak out against something that breaks the law. It’s not always easy to speak out against something that breaks the value of our communities because it’s hateful, because it scares people, because it makes people feel unsafe,” Segal said. He mused that the fact that so many neo-Nazis now have Chitwood in their crosshairs “creates an inadvertent bond between law enforcement and the Jewish community, that they’re both being harassed by antisemites.”
Lennick had advised local Jews not to attend the site of the protests, not even to participate in the counter-protests. “You’re walking a fine line,” he said. “You don’t want to fuel the bad guys.”
Chitwood, though, has made a point out of naming and shaming the antisemites in his midst, believing that the increased media attention will expose further misdeeds and make it harder for them to hold down employment.
“There is now a national spotlight on these GDL punks,” Chitwood said. “Sooner or later, they’re going to stub their toe. And you have all these entities looking at you.”
The sheriff wants to go further in his crusade. He has pushed for a bill in the Florida legislature that would allow him and other law enforcement in the state to charge people with felonies for distributing fliers and broadcasting messages of “ethnic intimidation” on private property.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis shows off after signing a bill making “ethnic intimidation” displays a felony in his state, during a ceremony at the Museum of Tolerance in Jerusalem, April 27, 2023. Randy Fine, a Jewish Republican lawmaker from Florida who authored the bill, stands at left. (Yonatan Sindel/Flash90)
On Thursday, Florida’s Republican governor, Ron DeSantis, signed the bill into law during a ceremony in Jerusalem after Randy Fine, the Jewish Republican state representative who authored it, delivered it to him there. (DeSantis last year called Nazis rallying in his state “jackasses” but drew criticism for not condemning them more forcefully.) The law was written specifically to address the kinds of activities the Goyim Defense League regularly engages in, including the Daytona message that spurred Chitwood to address the problem head-on, and enjoyed unanimous support from legislators of both parties.
“I guess we need to thank our scumbag Neo-Nazi invaders for uniting our community and the entire state of Florida against hate,” Chitwood tweeted after the signing.
“I see it as another tool in the toolbox,” Chitwood told JTA about his support of the bill. “You go onto private property and drop these leaflets on somebody’s doorstep or in their driveway, that’s now a felony trespass.”
Chitwood acknowledges that law enforcement can often be slow to respond to crimes of ethnic intimidation, and particularly online harassment, which hinders their ability to organize against a common threat. “We are very reactive,” he said. “No matter what it is, even a car break trend, sometimes you have to break into 20 or 30 cars before we detect a trend to go and do what needs to be done.”
He’s frank about the police’s shortcomings when it comes to dealing with such behavior. The fact that he is a sheriff, he said, meant that it was easier to bring the perpetrators of out-of-state online death threats to justice. And, he said, broad coordination across different law enforcement entities for the specific addressing of antisemitism in the state does not yet exist: Apart from communication with some neighboring county sheriffs and the FBI, efforts to collaborate with the broader law enforcement community have been slow.
But, he said, he remains committed to trying to fight antisemitism in his own backyard at the very least. “It is personal,” Chitwood said. “This is my community.”
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Reshaping the Diaspora: Israeli Migration Is Changing Jewish Life Across Europe
Pro-Israel demonstrators gathered at Bebelplatz in central Berlin on Nov. 30, 2025, before marching toward the Brandenburg Gate. Participants held Israeli flags and signs condemning rising antisemitism in Germany. Photo: Michael Kuenne/PRESSCOV/Sipa USA via Reuters Connect
Even as antisemitic incidents across Europe reach levels unseen in decades following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel, Jews and Israelis continue to move to the very cities where Jewish identity feels most fraught — creating an unlikely, though often uneven, pattern of demographic renewal at the heart of today’s Jewish diaspora. It is a quiet shift that persists against all odds: growth where fear might suggest retreat.
Despite an increasingly hostile social and political climate, Jewish life in much of Europe is not shrinking. In some places, it is holding steady — and in others, growing. Indeed, according to recent demographic reports, Israeli immigrant communities in Europe are among the fastest-growing Jewish communities in the world.
In Berlin, Hebrew can be heard on park benches and in co-working spaces. In Amsterdam, Jewish schools report steady enrollment and new Hebrew-speaking parents arriving each semester. In London cafés, Israeli students trade WhatsApp groups for housing and internships, while British Jewish institutions describe newcomers who arrive anxious but eager to build communities. Meanwhile, new Chabad houses continue to open across the continent.
Today, Europe is home to nearly 30 percent of all Israelis living outside the country — roughly 190,000 to 200,000 people — with their population steadily increasing across the continent, according to a report from the Institute for Jewish Policy Research (JPR).
JPR data shows that Israel-born Jews now make up nearly 50 percent of the Jewish population in Norway, 41 percent in Finland, and over 20 percent in Bulgaria, Ireland, Spain, and Denmark.
Over the past decade, the number of Israeli-born Jews has grown significantly in Baltic countries (135 percent), in Ireland (95 percent), in Bulgaria (78 percent), in the Czech Republic (74 percent), in Spain (39 percent), in the Netherlands (36 percent), in Germany (34 percent), and in the UK (27 percent).
Europe today is witnessing both rising antisemitism and a growing presence of Israelis — a dynamic that upends long-held assumptions about Jewish life on the continent and challenges popular narratives about Jewish “safety” and migration in the post-Oct. 7 era. Demographers, Jewish leaders, and recent residents describe a moment defined not by disappearance, but by movement, recalibration, and — in some places — cautious renewal.
“You can really see the growth in recent years,” said Shai Dotish, who lives in Berlin and serves as the director of community development at Israeli Community Europe (ICE) — a nonprofit organization dedicated to supporting Israeli immigrants in 16 cities across the continent. “Our Shabbat dinners keep getting bigger, services are fuller, events are livelier. You can feel a vibrant, thriving Jewish life across the cities we serve.”
A Post–Oct. 7 Europe Transformed
The paradox is clear: antisemitism has reached levels not seen in decades, yet European Jewish communities are being stabilized — and in some cases subtly grown — by Israeli arrivals. Europe today hosts more Israel-born Jews than ever before, and many are arriving even as hostility rises.
“There’s no denying the risk and rising antisemitism, but Jewish life isn’t shrinking — it’s growing,” Doitsh told The Algemeiner, adding that ICE is even opening new centers in other European countries to meet higher demand for community services.
This quiet influx is unfolding against one of the most challenging climates European Jews have faced in the 21st century.
Governments and Jewish security organizations across the continent have documented a dramatic rise in anti-Jewish hate crimes since the Oct. 7 atrocities. Germany recorded more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents in 2024 — nearly double pre-Oct. 7 levels. While Germany’s Jewish population has grown in some urban centers, the rise in antisemitic crimes has prompted heightened security in schools, synagogues, and community hubs.
In the UK, the Community Security Trust (CST) — a nonprofit charity that advises Britain’s Jewish community on security matters — recorded 1,521 antisemitic incidents from January to June this year. This was the second-highest number of antisemitic crimes ever recorded by CST in the first six months of any year, following 2,019 incidents in the first half of 2024.
Last month, hundreds of anti-Israel demonstrators gathered outside St. John’s Woods Synagogue in London to protest the war in Gaza. In widely circulated social media videos, protesters are seen chanting, “We don’t want no two states, Palestine 48,” and “From the river to the sea, Zionism is f– treif.”
France presents a similar pattern. According to the French Interior Ministry, the first six months of 2025 saw more than 640 antisemitic incidents, a 27.5 percent decline from the same period in 2024, but a 112.5 percent increase compared to the first half of 2023, before the Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel.
Across the country, Jewish families have reported removing mezuzot, changing children’s school routes, and avoiding synagogues unless armed security is present.
In France, rising antisemitism and economic factors have led to slight declines in the number of Jewish households, particularly in Paris and Marseille. While French Jews continue to live, work, and participate in communal life, emigration to Israel and other European countries slightly outpaces arrivals.
Smaller European nations — including Spain, Belgium, and Central/Eastern European states — have seen modest Israeli migration, sometimes doubling small local communities.
Amid this increasingly fraught climate, Doitsh said a real sense of vulnerability persists, affecting people’s daily lives as community members and families take new precautions about where they go and what they wear.
For the first time in years, ICE-sponsored events across multiple countries have even had to introduce security. He also noted that organizers are changing event locations and keeping addresses private.
“The community is now dealing not only with antisemitism but with violence, hostility, and open hatred. Many people feel unsafe in their daily lives,” Dotish said.
Yet fear has had a counterintuitive effect: strengthening community life.
“Antisemitism has reinforced community ties,” said Professor Sergio DellaPergola, chairman of JPR’s European Demography Unit and a leading scholar of Jewish population studies. “People seek solidarity and connection. When they feel vulnerable, they look for their own community.”
The Truth Behind the Numbers: An Uneven Trend
Though Israeli-born Jewish communities in Europe have grown substantially in recent years, the trend remains complex and uneven throughout the region.
“This is not a moment of large waves of Jewish migration,” Dr. Daniel Staetsky, senior research fellow at JPR, told The Algemeiner. “What we are observing are moderate but meaningful movements, and they vary significantly by country.”
While the total Jewish population in Europe may not be growing substantially in absolute number, its composition is changing dramatically. This shift reflects two interconnected trends: the demographic decline of native European Jews and the rising number of Israeli Jews relocating to the continent. Even modest arrivals can have a significant impact against the backdrop of an aging Jewish population.
“In Western Europe, immigration from Israel has helped stabilize Jewish populations and, in some cases, create slight increases,” DellaPergola told The Algemeiner. “But these increases occur against a background of demographic decline, especially in countries like Germany and Italy, where fertility is very low.”
In other words, Israeli immigration helps keep European Jewish populations stable, masking the underlying decline of “native” communities where low fertility would otherwise shrink the absolute number of Jews.
Western European nations such as Germany and the Netherlands have seen their Jewish numbers bolstered in recent years by Israelis seeking economic opportunities, academic programs, and, paradoxically, a sense of stability.
In Germany, Israeli arrivals are concentrated in Berlin, Frankfurt, and Munich. Hebrew-language classes and Jewish cultural programming have expanded, stabilizing what would otherwise be a declining population due to low fertility. Security concerns remain elevated, but the communities themselves report renewed energy.
In the Netherlands, slow but steady Israeli immigration helps counterbalance demographic decline. Amsterdam schools, synagogues, and youth programs increasingly rely on this influx.
“Immigration from Israel has played a stabilizing role for countries like the Netherlands,” Staetsky said. “It is not large enough to reverse aging or lower fertility, but it slows decline and creates demographic balance.”
Meanwhile, Britain’s Jewish community has remained largely steady at around 313,000, compared with approximately 300,000–320,000 a decade ago.
According to a 2018 JPR study, high birthrates among Haredi Orthodox Jews are responsible for the recent growth in the number of British Jews after decades of decline. Births in the British Jewish community have reportedly exceeded deaths every year since 2006, implying “Jewish demographic growth in the United Kingdom.”
France’s Jewish population, at roughly 438,500 today, was estimated to be over 500,000 in the mid-2010s — a gradual decline tied in part to emigration and rising antisemitism.
Eastern European Jewish communities, particularly in the Baltics, are also shrinking due to low fertility and ongoing migration, as increasing numbers make aliyah to Israel.
DellaPergola told The Algemeiner that this trend reflects long-term structural factors rather than a sudden ideological shift.
“There is a dynamic flow,” he said. “Many Israelis move to Europe, but simultaneously many European [Jews] move to Israel. You have arrivals and departures, and the result in most countries is relative stability.”
However, DellaPergola also acknowledged that the war in Israel has dramatically altered migration patterns.
In 2024, approximately 80,000 Israelis left the country while only 24,000 returned, creating an unprecedented negative migration balance of almost 58,000 people, according to the Israeli Bureau of Statistics.
“I expect this trend to continue into 2025, marking a second consecutive year of negative migration, something unprecedented,” DellaPergola said.
Some of these emigrants may be responsible for the recent growth of Israeli communities in Europe, according to Staetsky.
Earlier this year, a study by the Israel Democracy Institute found that over one in four Israelis are contemplating leaving the country, pointing to the high cost of living, security and political concerns, and “the lack of a good future for my children” as key factors. Of those considering emigration, the European Union is the top destination (43 percent), surpassing North America and Canada (27 percent).
A Demographic Paradox
Staetsky emphasized that most Jewish migration today is not driven by ideology or fear alone.
“Migration trends reflect a balance of economic and social considerations,” he told The Algemeiner. “People move where they believe opportunity is strongest.”
Europe’s future as a Jewish center is far from assured. Fertility rates across the continent remain low. Political volatility is rising. Trust in public institutions varies sharply by country. For many Israeli families abroad, Europe is not necessarily a permanent destination but part of a global career trajectory.
This uncertainty is not abstract. For some Israelis living in Europe, it has become deeply personal. Take the case of Benjamin Birley — an Israeli Jew living in Rome and a social media influencer — whose experience lays bare the strain many Jews say they now feel in their everyday lives.
Birley came to Italy to pursue a doctoral degree and has spent the past several years there. But he says the climate has shifted sharply, with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict seeping into daily interactions in ways he describes as “unbearable.” Even though he must return to finish his program, he has decided to leave Europe temporarily and go back to Israel “to get some fresh air and breathe.”
“Italy in general has a lot of anti-Israel sentiment,” Birley told The Algemeiner. “There is just a relentless Palestinianism that is always in the media, in the culture, in your local café.”
“If you’re Jewish or Israeli and you’re openly Jewish or Israeli in Italy, you have to be prepared for endless conversations and debate and hostility with random people who literally have no idea what they’re speaking about. And for me that was just not a sustainable way to live,” he said.
DellaPergola cautioned against long-term predictions. “I believe it is not worth making projections given the difficult and uncertain times European Jewish communities are experiencing,” he said.
If there is a takeaway, it is not a grand demographic narrative but a more complex and human one: Israelis and Jews are weighing fear against opportunity, identity against mobility, history against present-day realities. They are choosing Europe not because it is uniquely safe, but because it still offers possibility — even amid threat.
The story of Jews in Europe after Oct. 7 is not retreat. It is one of presence and a quiet reshaping of diaspora patterns in a world where the old certainties no longer hold.
While Europe’s Jewish future remains uncertain, it is being rewritten, not erased.
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Students Form ‘Human Swastika’ at California High School, Post Image With Hitler Quote
Students forming “human swastika.” Photo: Screenshot.
Eight students at Branham High School in the city of San Jose came together last week to form what police described as a “human swastika” on the campus’ football field in another disturbing antisemitic incident at a California K-12 school.
The students captured the moment in a photograph and later posted it to social media, captioning it with a quote by Adolf Hitler.
Authorities in San Jose have launched a hate crime investigation into the incident, according to local media outlets.
School officials denounced the students’ actions.
“Our message to the community is clear: this was a disturbing and unacceptable act of antisemitism,” Branham High School principal Beth Silbergeld said in a statement. “Many in our community were rightly appalled by the image. Personally, I am horrified by this act. Professionally, I am confident that our school community can learn from this moment and emerge stronger and more united.”
According to the Bay Area Jewish Coalition (BAJC), which supports the local Jewish community,
“This incident did not occur in isolation,” BAJC spokesperson Tali Klima told The Algemeiner on Tuesday. “Over the past two years, we have seen a troubling pattern in which Jews are increasingly demonized and targeted. While the circumstances differ from those of Nazi Germany, the common thread is the deliberate spread of harmful narratives.”
Klima continued, “The fact that eight students felt emboldened to engage in this hateful behavior on campus (and then post publicly) reflects an educational environment that has allowed extremist political agendas which are blatantly antisemitic into our schools. The district and state must take decisive action to restore a climate of tolerance, respect, and inclusion for Jewish students and the broader community.”
California’s state government recently approved legislation for combating K-12 antisemitism which called for establishing a new Office for Civil Rights for monitoring antisemitism in public schools, appointing an Antisemitism Prevention Coordinator, setting parameters within which the Israeli-Palestinian conflict may be equitably discussed, and barring antisemitic materials from the classroom.
State lawmakers introduced the measure, also known as Assembly Bill (AB) 715, in the California legislature following a rise in antisemitic incidents, including vandalism and assault. The list of outrages includes a student group chanting “Kill the Jews” during an anti-Israel protest and partisan activists smuggling far-left, anti-Zionist content into classrooms without clearing the content with parents and other stakeholders.
Elsewhere in California, K-12 antisemitism has caused severe psychological trauma to Jewish students as young as eight years old and fostered a hostile learning environment, as previously reported by The Algemeiner.
In Berkeley United School District (BUSD), teachers have allegedly used their classrooms to promote antisemitic stereotypes about Israel, weaponizing disciplines such as art and history to convince unsuspecting minors that Israel is a “settler-colonial” apartheid state committing a genocide of Palestinians. While this took place, high level BUSD officials allegedly ignored complaints about discrimination and tacitly approved hateful conduct even as it spread throughout the student body.
At Berkeley High School (BUSD), for example, a history teacher forced students to explain why Israel is an apartheid state and screened an anti-Zionist documentary, according to a lawsuit filed last year by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and the Anti-Defamation League (ADL). The teacher allegedly squelched dissent, telling a Jewish student who raised concerns about the content of her lessons that only anti-Zionist narratives matter in her classroom and that any other which argues that Israel isn’t an apartheid state is “laughable.” Elsewhere in the school, an art teacher, whose name is redacted from the complaint for matters of privacy, displayed anti-Israel artworks in his classroom, one of which showed a fist punching through a Star of David.
In September 2023, some of America’s most prominent Jewish and civil rights groups sued the Santa Clara Unified School District (SCUSD) in California for concealing from the public its adoption of ethnic studies curricula containing antisemitic and anti-Zionist themes. Then in February, the school district paused implementation of the program to settle the lawsuit.
One month later, the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law, StandWithUs, and the ADL filed a civil rights complaint accusing the Etiwanda School District in San Bernardino County, California, of doing nothing after a 12-year-old Jewish girl was assaulted, having been beaten with stick, on school grounds and teased with jokes about Hitler.
Antisemitism in K-12 schools has increased every year of this decade, according to data compiled by the ADL. In 2023, antisemitic incidents in US public schools increased 135 percent, a figure which included a rise in vandalism and assault.
California is not alone in dealing with the issue. Pennsylvania has a significant K-12 antisemitism problem as well, a fact acknowledged recently by a surrogate of the administration of Gov. Josh Shapiro following Congress announcing an investigation into antisemitism in the School District of Philadelphia (SDP) and a disturbing anti-Israel statement at a high school in the Wissahickon School District.
“Governor Shapiro takes a back seat to no one on these issues, and as he has repeatedly spoken out about antisemitism, and this kind of hateful rhetoric is unacceptable and has no place in Pennsylvania — especially not in our classrooms,” Rosie Lapowsky, a spokesperson for Shapiro, said in a statement first shared with Fox News Digital. “This is a matter the governor has made clear the district needs to take very seriously.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Jewish Groups Slam Basque Government for Honoring Anti-Israel UN Rapporteur Francesca Albanese
Francesca Albanese, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, attends a side event during the Human Rights Council at the United Nations in Geneva, Switzerland, March 26, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Denis Balibouse
Jewish communities in Spain and France have condemned the Basque government’s decision to award UN Special Rapporteur Francesca Albanese a human rights honor, citing her long record of making antisemitic remarks, promoting anti-Jewish hatred, and seemingly legitimizing Hamas’s terrorist attacks on the Jewish state.
Last week, the government of the Basque Region in northern Spain announced that Albanese will receive the 2025 René Cassin Human Rights Award, named after French Jewish human rights and Zionist activist René Cassin – author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
“Through her work at the United Nations, Francesca Albanese has played a key role in exposing human rights violations, challenging impunity, and advocating for the effective enforcement of international norms that protect people in conflict and occupied territories,” the announcement read.
Albanese’s work “is marked by legal rigor, independent judgment, and a strong ethical commitment that should guide all those working to uphold human rights on the international stage,” it continued.
In a joint statement on Monday, the Federation of Jewish Communities in Spain (FCJE) and the Representative Council of Jewish Institutions of France (CRIF) denounced the decision, arguing it undermines the principles that Cassin stood for.
“René Cassin, author of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, Nobel Peace Prize laureate, and fervent defender of justice, held an unwavering commitment to peace, human dignity, and the right of the Jewish people to live in security,” the statement read.
“Awarding this prize to Ms. Albanese constitutes a distortion of Cassin’s legacy and a serious misunderstanding of the values of human rights,” it continued.
Communiqué conjoint – La Fédération des Communautés Juives d’Espagne @fcjecom et le Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (Crif) expriment leur profond désaccord avec l’attribution, par le Gouvernement basque, du Prix René Cassin 2025 des droits de l’Homme à…
— CRIF (@Le_CRIF) December 5, 2025
Albanese is set to receive the award at a ceremony on Wednesday in Bilbao, a city in northern Spain.
The World Jewish Congress (WJC) also condemned the Spanish government’s decision, voicing support for the Jewish communities in Spain and France and calling the move “deeply troubling.”
“Albanese has repeatedly advanced narratives that minimize or excuse violence against Jews and has a documented record of antisemitic rhetoric,” WJC posted on X.
The Basque Government’s decision to award the 2025 René Cassin Human Rights Prize to Francesca Albanese is deeply troubling. Albanese has repeatedly advanced narratives that minimize or excuse violence against Jews and has a documented record of antisemitic rhetoric.
We support… https://t.co/ZT5QfOgzpa
— World Jewish Congress (@WorldJewishCong) December 5, 2025
Despite objections from several governments including France, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, and the Netherlands, as well as numerous NGOs, Albanese was reappointed earlier this year for a three-year term amid concerns about her controversial remarks and alleged pro-Hamas stance.
Since taking on the role of UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories in 2022, Albanese has been at the center of controversy due to what critics, including US and European lawmakers, have described as antisemitic and anti-Israel public remarks.
In the months following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israeli communities, Albanese accused Israel of perpetrating a “genocide” against the Palestinian people in revenge for the attacks and circulated a widely derided and heavily disputed report alleging that 186,000 people have been killed in Gaza as a result of Israeli actions.
She has also previously made comments about a “Jewish lobby” controlling America and Europe, compared Israel to Nazi Germany, and stated that Hamas’s violence against Israelis — including rape, murder, and kidnapping — needs to be “put in context.”
Last year, the UN launched a probe into Albanese for allegedly accepting a trip to Australia funded by pro-Hamas organizations.
In the past, she has also celebrated the anti-Israel protesters rampaging across US college campuses, saying they represent a “revolution” and give her “hope.”