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How many Hebrew Israelites are there, and how worried should Jews be?
(JTA) — Dressed in matching purple hoodies and shirts, with gold fringes attached to the bottom in observance of Deuteronomy 22:12, hundreds of members of a controversial Hebrew Israelite group marched through the streets of Brooklyn on Sunday.
“Hey Jacob, it’s time to wake up,” they chanted, using a term for people of color who have yet to embrace their “true” identity as descendants of the Biblical Jacob, later called Israel. “We got good news for you: YOU are the real Jews.”
The march and a demonstration that followed at the Barclays Center were organized by Israel United in Christ in solidarity with Brooklyn Nets star Kyrie Irving, who was suspended for eight games after he posted a link to an antisemitic film on social media last month and then was slow to apologize. But IUIC has also used the controversy to promote its incendiary ideology and recruit new followers into what it calls “God’s army.”
After the demonstration — the second held by IUIC outside of the Brooklyn arena this month — the group’s founder posted a message on his Twitter account. “We are not here for violence,” Bishop Nathanyel Ben Israel wrote, “we are here for the spiritual war.”
Before 2019, those American Jews who were even aware of the once-obscure Black Hebrew Israelite spiritual movement likely associated it with the loud but non-violent street preachers who would harangue pedestrians in city centers. In December of that year, however, extremists professing Israelite beliefs attacked a kosher grocery store in Jersey City, New Jersey and a Hanukkah party in Monsey, New York. Two Jews were killed in Jersey City, and a 72-year-old rabbi who was stabbed in the head in Monsey died from his injuries three months later.
With the memory of those attacks still fresh, and against the backdrop of a surge this fall in public expressions of antisemitism combined with threats of violence against Jewish communities emanating from other extremist corners, the militant posturing of IUIC has alarmed many Jews already on edge.
Rabbi Mordechai Lightstone of Crown Heights observed on Twitter that the Israelites who regularly preach near his home on Shabbat have been “particularly aggressive” of late, heaping verbal abuse on both him and his children. On Sunday afternoon, Lightstone posted a video of IUIC members assembling for their march and rehearsing their chants in Grand Army Plaza.
“Terrifying,” commented Elisheva Rishon, a Black and Jewish fashion designer who blames Hebrew Israelites for inflaming tensions between the two communities to which she belongs. A few Twitter users compared the march to the 2017 far-right rally in Charlottesville, at which participants chanted “Jews will not replace us.”
The recent IUIC rallies give the impression that the radical wing of the Hebrew Israelite movement is large and riled up. Meanwhile, recent comments by Kanye West, the rapper who now goes by Ye, and Irving that align with elements of Hebrew Israelite doctrine suggest the movement has broad support among powerful Black celebrities.
But how big is the movement in reality? What percentage are extremists who assail Jews as impostors who stole their heritage from them? And if Black Israelism has entered the marketplace of mainstream religions in the United States, should Jews be concerned?
The numbers
The only available statistics on Israelite identification in the United States were collected as part of a small national survey conducted by an evangelical Christian research firm in 2019. For that survey, which sought to capture African-American attitudes toward the state of Israel, Lifeway Research asked 1,019 African Americans, “Which of the following best describes your opinion of Black Hebrew Israelite teachings?”
Most respondents (62%) said they are not familiar with the teachings, but 19% said they agree with “most of the core ideas taught by Black Hebrew Israelites,” and 4% said they consider themselves Hebrew Israelites. The remaining 15% said they either “firmly oppose” the teachings or disagree with most of them. (The survey did not specify what those teachings are.)
The 2020 U.S. Census put the Black population at 41.1 million, so extrapolating from the Lifeway data, there are approximately 1.6 million Hebrew Israelites in the U.S. — not counting the small numbers of Latinos and Native Americans who also belong to Israelite groups — and 7.8 million people who may not identify as Israelites but who agree with the spiritual movement’s main teachings.
For lots of these people, the attention that West and Irving have brought to their belief system has been validating.
“Israelism is becoming part of the plausibility structure of Black America,” Christian activist and author Vocab Malone told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, referring to a social context in which certain ideas are considered credible. “The suspicions that a lot of folks have toward the Jewish community, they think they’re vindicated now.”
Scott McConnell, Lifeway’s executive director, told JTA that the survey’s sponsor, the Christian Zionist organization Philos Project, supplied the question about Hebrew Israelite teachings. Asked if there are plans to include similar questions in future surveys, he replied, “I know there are some pastors at African-American churches that have concerns about some of their parishioners being led astray by the teachings of the Hebrew Israelites, so we’ll keep it on our radar.”
Malone, who uses an alias in keeping with hip-hop culture, is a close observer of the Israelite world. The Phoenix resident frequently engages in debates on the street and online with members of groups described as hateful by the Southern Poverty Law Center — including IUIC, Israelite School of Universal Practical Knowledge, Israelite Church of God in Jesus Christ, and The Sicarii — in hopes of convincing them to follow what he considers to be the true path of Christianity.
Founded in 2003, IUIC has proven the most adept at creating public spectacles and garnering media coverage. The group operates 71 U.S. chapters and 20 international ones, according to the Anti-Defamation League, and it holds men’s conferences each year that culminate in choreographed marches on city streets, like the one on Sunday in Brooklyn. Based on the size of those marches, Malone estimated that national membership has grown from around 5,000 in 2015 to around 10,000 today. Other radical groups likely have much smaller memberships but don’t share any figures, preferring to “play their cards close to their chest,” Malone said.
These estimates suggest that the extremists comprise a very small percentage of the 1.6 Hebrew Israelites living in the United States.
Ultimately, IUIC has a goal of recruiting 144,000 Black, Latino and Native American people who will be spared by God during the end time, as foretold in the book of Revelation. In order to achieve this goal, the group sends representatives to proselytize overseas, including in parts of Africa and the Caribbean. (IUIC did not respond to requests for comment from JTA.)
Both the Southern Poverty Law Center and the ADL monitor the activities of IUIC and other radical camps, as Israelites call their groups. However, spokespeople for both organizations told JTA they do not know how many people belong to these camps.
An online movement
What is clear is that the camps have greatly expanded their reach in recent years, taking their message from street corners to the entire globe thanks to the internet and social media. IUIC members run dozens of YouTube, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter accounts where they post a constant stream of videos and memes, many containing antisemitic tropes. One recent Instagram post shows a startled-looking Hasidic Jewish man holding his hat above the words “The Synagogue of Satan.” (Louis Farrakhan, the leader of the Nation of Islam, uses similar language about Jews. A video he recorded this month defending West and Irving has been viewed millions of times.)
The main IUIC YouTube channel, @IUICintheClassRoom, has 126,000 subscribers and 29.4 million video views. A series of videos posted three years ago on the channels of local chapters provide some insight into how members hear about IUIC and why they join.
The most common way these members say they found their way to the camp was via videos they watched online. “Prior to actually coming to IUIC, I did do some Israelite window shopping,” recounts Officer Joshua of IUIC Tallahassee. “I always questioned myself, why is it that our people are at the bottom? How come we get the worst jobs and so forth? I knew Christianity wasn’t answering my questions, so what I did was I just started soul searching.”
As part of his quest, Joshua says he stumbled upon a video of Bishop Nathanyel and other IUIC leaders preaching on the street. “I was like man, these brothers really know what they’re doing, they really have our history,” he says. “That’s what actually made me do more research on IUIC and the truth.”
Sar (“Minister”) Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda speaks at the African Hebrew Israelites’ annual New World Passover celebration in Dimona, Israel, May 2013. (Andrew Esensten)
In another video, Sister Ezriella from the Concord, North Carolina, branch explains that as a young adult, she felt uncertain about her life’s purpose. Then her mother shared information with her about IUIC. “She was so happy it changed her life, I had to take notice and I had to come check it out for myself,” she says. “I fell in love with it. I fell in love with finding out who I am.”
A number of Black, male celebrities have also been drawn into the wider Israelite orbit in recent years, including rappers Kendrick Lamar and Kodak Black, TV host Nick Cannon, boxer Floyd Mayweather and retired NBA player Amar’e Stoudemire.
Some of these celebrities appear to have been exposed to Israelite teachings by relatives and other acquaintances. Lamar, who famously rapped “I’m a Israelite, don’t call me Black no mo’” on a 2017 song, learned about Israelism from a cousin who was involved with IUIC. Black began identifying as a Levite in 2017 after studying scripture with an Israelite priest while serving a jail sentence in Florida. Stoudemire has said his mother taught him he had “Hebraic roots.” (He officially converted to Judaism in 2020, a step most Israelites reject because it contradicts their claims of already being authentic Jews.)
Isabelle Williams, an analyst at ADL’s Center on Extremism who tracks radical Israelite camps, said celebrity endorsements of the ideology can have a big impact because they come from figures who are widely respected.
“If people came upon an extremist Black Hebrew Israelite group street preaching, it might be easier to dismiss it and recognize the extreme ideology behind it,” she said. “But when it’s being shared by these influential figures, people might be less likely to recognize the really insidious ideology and dangerous antisemitic conspiracy theories that are behind these statements.”
Williams added that a range of extremist groups have seized on comments made by West and Irving. “It’s not just BHI and NOI groups that are leveraging this moment,” Williams said. “We’ve seen white supremacists who are also using this recent attention and circulation of antisemitic conspiracy theories to promote their own agenda.”
Rabbi Capers Funnye is the most prominent Israelite leader in the U.S. He serves as chief rabbi of the International Israelite Board of Rabbis, an organization that provides spiritual guidance to about 2,500 people in the United States, along with tens of thousands of Israelites in southern and west Africa.
In an interview, Funnye condemned West, Irving and the radical Israelite camps that have rallied around them. “God is never about divisiveness,” Funnye said. “God is never about hatred. God is never about, ‘You ain’t.’ I don’t have to say what you aren’t to make me who I am.”
A member of the Chicago Board of Rabbis and the leader of a Chicago synagogue with a mixed membership of around 200 Jews and Israelites, Funnye was at pains to differentiate his community from IUIC and its ilk: His follows the Torah and supports the state of Israel, he said, while others follow both the Old and New Testaments, worship Jesus and reject Israel’s government as illegitimate.
“Whatever army that Kyrie is speaking about, we are not a part of his army,” he said, referring to a comment Irving made during an Oct. 29 press conference about how he has “a whole army” behind him.
But Funnye said another of Irving’s recent statements — “I cannot be antisemitic if I know where I come from” — resonated with him and his congregants.
“We are Semitic,” he said of Black people who identify as Israelites, “so now we really have to draw a line when antisemitism is only defined by one’s complexion or ethnicity. We were not the ones that racialized Judaism, and we will never racialize it because Jews are not a race.” (“Semitic” refers to people who speak Semitic languages, such as Hebrew and Arabic.)
Outside of the United States, the largest organized group of Hebrew Israelites is located in Israel. The African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem are a Dimona-based community of more than 3,000 African-American expatriates and their Israeli-born offspring.
African Hebrew Israelite youth serve in the army — not Kyrie Irving’s or IUIC’s army, but the Israel Defense Forces. After 53 years in Israel, the community has never been fully accepted, in part because they are not Jewish according to halacha, or Jewish law. Currently, some 100 community members are being threatened with deportation for living in the country illegally.
Ahmadiel Ben Yehuda, the African Hebrew Israelites’ minister of information, said he interpreted Irving’s remarks as a reference to “the global awakening of people of African ancestry to their Hebraic roots.” He said the backlash Irving has faced shows that the conversation around this awakening must involve qualified representatives of communities who can cite reputable sources — not documentaries such as the one Irving boosted — “Hebrews to Negroes: Wake Up Black America” — in support of their claims of Israelite ancestry.
“What is certain is that Israel and Judaism must figure out a way to better accommodate these communities,” Ben Yehuda said. “This is not going to fade away, and it shouldn’t. It will intensify as the awakening continues.”
How this awakening will affect Jews and established Jewish communities remains to be seen.
In September, George Washington University’s Program on Extremism released a report titled “Contemporary Violent Extremism and the Black Hebrew Israelite Movement.” The report noted that the “predominant threat” today comes not from Israelite groups themselves but from “individuals loosely affiliated with or inspired by the movement.”
Malone, the Christian activist, cautioned that as the extremist wing of the Israelite movement grows, more violent lone wolves may emerge.
“There’s a big funnel with any movement, and the bigger the funnel is, you get certain things down at the bottom,” he said. “This is not Buddhism. This is a different kind of thing with a different kind of rhetoric.”
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The post How many Hebrew Israelites are there, and how worried should Jews be? appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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We’re losing the fight against antisemitism. Here’s how to turn the tide
Why are we failing to effectively fight antisemitism?
When New York Times columnist Bret Stephens sparked a furor by making the case, earlier this month, that it’s time for the Jewish community to stop prioritizing that fight — because we’ve invested so much in trying to educate people about antisemitism, yet there is still antisemitism — he got the fundamental issue wrong.
The question is not whether we should try to fight antisemitism. It’s how. What if we took Stephens’s premise — that these efforts aren’t working — and imagined what could?
Since Stephens’ speech, our communal reaction has been too focused on the smaller-scale issues he raised. Was his critique of the ADL reasonable? Was he right that Jews are hated because of our “virtues and successes,” and that antisemitism is too powerful for appeals to tolerance and education to work? By focusing on such questions, we risk missing the bigger picture. Antisemitism will never be fully eradicated. Still, if, as one study suggests, some 45% of Republicans under the age of 44 feel that Jews are a threat to the American way of life, the answer can’t be to shrug.
But the fact that we have yet to make meaningful 21st-century strides in reducing antisemitism — and that, per most polls and studies, we’re going in the opposite direction — means that we need to rethink how to combat it in 21st-century terms. Here are three ideas for how to begin.
Invest in media literacy
Given that we know that antisemitism and conspiracy theories work together to sow distrust and paranoia and induce nihilism, perhaps Jewish leaders should spend more time pushing for greater investment in media literacy — not only about antisemitism, but in general.
A 2022 Stanford study found that “high school students who received only six 50-minute lessons in digital literacy were twice as likely to spot questionable websites as they were before the instruction took place.” At first glance, media literacy isn’t “about” or “for” Jews. But a 2025 study from Chapman University found that young people, like the rest of us, are being pushed by social media into echo chambers. Increasingly, and relatedly, they believe all information is suspect, or at least equally agenda-driven — a reality that makes pushing back on conspiracy theories more difficult, particularly when research has also found that teenagers are likely to believe content if they see it over and over again.
A country in which more people are taught how to be on guard against conspiracy and untruths is one in which people are more prepared to identify and critically react to the antisemitism being sprinkled into their media diet.
Rethink how we teach about the Holocaust
In his address, Stephens also essentially said that Holocaust education hasn’t worked. After all, we tried it, and yet, per the Claims Conference, “nearly 20% of Millennials and Gen Z in New York feel the Jews caused the Holocaust.”
But is it that teaching about the Holocaust doesn’t work — or that we need to teach it differently?
Some studies suggest that learning about the Holocaust increases tolerance toward minorities and people with different viewpoints. They also suggest, however, that mandating Holocaust education as an isolated item — rather than as part of a broader education in history and bigotry — doesn’t do much to help improve students’ knowledge.
The lesson here is that how we are teaching and learning about the Holocaust matters. Some, like scholars Jennifer Rich and William L. Smith, have suggested moving from a “learn from” approach to a “learn about” approach. Rather than use the Holocaust to teach students why they shouldn’t be antisemitic, the thinking goes, we should use it to teach them about the societal conditions that allowed the Holocaust to happen, and what actually transpired during it.
In other words, if we are too focused on Holocaust as an overarching moral lesson, we may fail to teach its concrete takeaways — about how hatred builds in a society, and the devastation that can follow — effectively.
Map the full network of hate
Finally, maybe we can’t fight antisemitism if we think about it in isolation. Our identity — and the suffering that can accompany it — does not exist in a silo.
There are good reasons to think that it’s more effective to fight antisemitism in tandem with other hatreds. In a 2016 study, researchers Maureen A. Craig and Jennifer A. Richeson looked at what they called “stigma-based solidarity.” What they found is that certain social conditions can push stigmatized group members to turn against other stigmatized groups, while other conditions can encourage them to turn toward one another. Consider how some Jewish and Muslim students became suspicious of one another during the Gaza war — and also how, as the Forward recently reported, some have found deeper connections since.
“One way to bridge the category divide,” Craig and Richeson wrote, “is by making an explicit connection between the in-group and another stigmatized group.…Common experiences or challenges are also associated with more coalitional attitudes among stigmatized groups.”
That means that pointing out the ways in which, say antisemitism and racism can play off each other can build solidarity between the targets of those hatreds. It is true that antisemitism is in some ways exceptional: it often functions in ways that look different from other forms of bigotry. But stressing its exceptionality may be working directly against the solidarity other minority groups feel for us.
In addition to hopefully building solidarity, explicitly drawing the link between antisemitism and other hatreds — and between Jews and other members of society — would be more honest and accurate. Antisemitism doesn’t only have negative consequences for Jews. We are seeing across the country, for instance, how the great replacement theory villainizes Jews and immigrants alike. When we embolden those who push conspiracy theories and nihilism, they hurt Jews, but they do not hurt Jews alone.
The pain of many persecuted groups in this country are bound up together. Maybe our way forward is, too.
The post We’re losing the fight against antisemitism. Here’s how to turn the tide appeared first on The Forward.
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‘No Way’ to Disarm Hamas Without Israel Taking All of Gaza, Former General Says
Israeli military personnel operate on the Israeli side of the Israel-Gaza border, on the day the Israeli military said it had resumed enforcing the Gaza ceasefire agreement after a series of strikes across the Gaza Strip, in southern Israel, Oct. 29, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ammar Awad
Israel will need to take over all of Gaza to meet its war objectives, a senior reserve Israeli general said, as the United States moves ahead with plans to assemble a multinational stabilization force that is not expected to deploy in Hamas-controlled areas.
Brig. Gen. (res.) Amir Avivi, a former deputy commander of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF)’s Gaza Division, said the military aims of the war — including the disarmament of Hamas — cannot be achieved without moving into the remaining parts of the enclave still held by the Palestinian terrorist group.
“There is no way to reach the goals of war without conquering Gaza,” Avivi told The Algemeiner.
“Ninety-nine point nine percent, the IDF is going to be the [party] that will dismantle Hamas,” Avivi said, noting that the Trump administration’s International Stabilization Force is expected to deploy only in Israeli-held areas and avoid confronting Hamas directly.
A decisive campaign could be completed in a month or two, Avivi said, because the constraints that slowed earlier phases of the war — most notably the presence of Israeli hostages in Hamas-held areas — no longer apply. The IDF could expand from its current 53 percent control of Gaza to 75 percent in “as little as a week,” he said.
With the Israeli security cabinet focused on Iran, no final decision has been taken yet on the next phase in Gaza, Avivi said. The government is likely to give Hamas “a month or two” to see if a confrontation with Iran materializes before moving to conclude the campaign in Gaza.
Avivi is the founder and chairman of the Israel Defense and Security Forum, known in Hebrew as Habitchonistim, a hawkish group of former senior officers and security officials that has consistently pushed for maximal military objectives in Gaza and opposed negotiated compromises with Hamas.
According to US and Israeli officials, the stabilization force is expected to begin deploying in southern Gaza, starting in Rafah, and expand gradually as conditions allow. The force is intended to help establish governance and security conditions in cleared areas, rather than conduct combat operations or forcibly disarm armed groups. Its commander, US Army Major General Jasper Jeffers, has said five countries — Indonesia, Morocco, Kazakhstan, Kosovo, and Albania — have committed personnel so far, with longer-term planning envisioning a significantly larger deployment of up to 20,000 troops and police focused on policing, security coordination and aid facilitation.
The Guardian reported last week that US contracting documents describe plans for a 350-acre military base in Gaza designed to support 5,000 people that will include watchtowers, bunkers, and training facilities. A US official declined to discuss the contract and reiterated that Washington does not plan to deploy US combat troops to the enclave.
The stabilization effort was formally launched in Washington on Thursday, when US President Donald Trump convened the inaugural meeting of his Board of Peace. Trump said participating countries had pledged roughly $7 billion as an initial down payment for Gaza reconstruction, while making clear that broader rebuilding would be conditioned on Hamas’s disarmament.
US officials and regional partners acknowledge that demilitarization would likely be a long-term process and that reconstruction carries political risk. Some donor states have privately raised concerns about funding rebuilding efforts only for Israel to return to large-scale military operations.
Avivi said Israel’s takeover of the enclave would be followed by a technically complex cleanup phase focused on dismantling tunnels and weapons stockpiles. “The whole area is full of tunnels and munitions,” he said. “Finding and destroying them is complicated. That part takes time.”
A strategy gaining traction in the US framework would see Gaza divided into two zones, a Hamas-free “green zone,” where reconstruction and alternative civilian governance could begin, and a “red zone” comprising areas still held by Hamas.
Former Israeli national security adviser Yaakov Amidror said that while he understands the logic behind the approach, it carries risks. Rebuilding Gaza first in IDF-controlled areas, he said, could allow Hamas to survive politically and militarily elsewhere in the enclave.
“If you build only where the IDF controls, you are effectively telling Hamas: you can stay in Gaza,” Amidror told The Algemeiner.
Avivi agreed that reconstruction would not begin “until they lay down their weapons,” warning that doing otherwise would amount to tolerating Hamas’s continued presence.
The Israeli general pointed to the period leading up to the October ceasefire, when Israeli forces advanced deep into Gaza City and took control of roughly half the city, as an example of how Hamas responds when the IDF enters its core terrain. He said Israel’s subsequent pullback to about 53 percent control of the Gaza Strip was driven by hostage negotiations rather than operational limits.
“It’s going to happen the nice way or the hard way,” Avivi said. “The hard way is the IDF. So, they either lay down the weapons and get out of Gaza or the IDF will go in and impose demilitarization.”
Amidror rejected arguments that Hamas is emerging from the war in a stronger position because of potential involvement by countries such as Qatar or Turkey, calling the claim disconnected from current military realities.
“It’s a stupid argument because Hamas is surrounded on all sides by the IDF — 300 degrees by land and 60 degrees by sea, which the IDF also controls,” Amidror told The Algemeiner. The terrorist group, he explained, cannot receive weapons because it has no land border with Egypt, cannot manufacture arms because Israel has destroyed its production infrastructure, and is surrounded on all sides by Israeli forces.
“The most it can do is fire a missile, probably once every six months,” Amidror said.
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Paris Kosher Restaurant Doused With Acid Amid Surge in Antisemitism Across France
Procession arrives at Place des Terreaux with a banner reading, “Against Antisemitism, for the Republic,” during the march against antisemitism, in Lyon, France, June 25, 2024. Photo: Romain Costaseca / Hans Lucas via Reuters Connect
A kosher restaurant in Paris has been vandalized with acid, damaging the facility and leading the prosecutor’s office to open an investigation into what authorities suspect was an antisemitism attack.
Employees at Kokoriko, an eatery located in the French capital’s 17th arrondissement, discovered on Friday morning that the acid had been sprayed overnight on the tables, walls, and floor, according to French media.
The crockery, cutlery, and glasses were rendered unusable. White dust was found on the tables from where the acid corroded the surfaces.
The Paris public prosecutor’s office immediately opened an investigation for “damage to the property of others by a means dangerous … committed because of race, ethnicity, nation, or religion.” The crime is punishable by a sentence of 15 years in prison and a fine of 150,000 euros.
Last week was not the first time that Kokoriko was targeted, according to French media. In October, the Kosher restaurant’s façade was sprayed with sulfuric acid. However, the investigation was closed, as authorities were unable to identify the perpetrators.
The most recent attack came one week after the French Interior Ministry released its annual report on anti-religious acts, revealing a troubling rise in antisemitic incidents documented in a joint dataset compiled with the Jewish Community Protection Service.
Antisemitism in France remained at alarmingly high levels last year, with 1,320 incidents recorded nationwide, as Jews and Israelis faced several targeted attacks amid a relentlessly hostile climate despite heightened security measures, according to the newly published data.
Although the total number of antisemitic outrages in 2025 fell by 16 percent compared to 2024’s second highest ever total of 1,570 cases, the newly released report warned that antisemitism remained “historically high,” with more than 3.5 attacks occurring every day.
Over the past 25 years, antisemitic acts “have never been as numerous as in the past three years,” the report said, noting a dramatic spike following the Hamas-led invasion of and massacre across southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.
Even though Jews make up less than 1 percent of France’s population, they accounted for 53 percent of all religiously motivated crimes last year.
Between 2022 and 2025, antisemitic attacks across France quadrupled, leaving the Jewish community more exposed than ever.
The most recent figure of total antisemitic incidents represents a 21 percent decline from 2023’s record high of 1,676 incidents, but a 203 percent increase from the 436 antisemitic acts recorded in 2022, before the Oct. 7 atrocities.
According to French officials, this latest report, which was based on documented cases and official complaints, still underestimated the true scope of the problem, largely due to widespread underreporting.
The rise in antisemitism appears to have carried into this year. Earlier this month, for example, a 13-year-old boy on his way to synagogue in Paris was brutally beaten by a knife-wielding assailant.
Days earlier, three Jewish men wearing kippahs were physically threatened with a knife and forced to flee after leaving their Shabbat services.
That incident came shortly after a Jewish primary school was vandalized, with windows smashed and security equipment damaged.
All three incidents took place in Paris.