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When Did the Current Wave of Antisemitism Begin?
Jewish-American Wall Street journalist Daniel Pearl. Photo: Screenshot
JNS.org – In nearly 30 years of writing and speaking about global antisemitism, I’ve been asked more than once if it’s possible to pinpoint when this present wave of hatred first reared its head. It’s a question that takes on added significance in the wake of the Oct. 7, 2023 Hamas pogrom in Israel—the event that continues to drive the topic of antisemitism to the top of the headlines around the world.
Of course, antisemitism never faded away entirely, as most Jews know all too well. The decades that followed the Allied victory over Nazi Germany, whose 80th anniversary we marked last week, ushered in an unprecedented age of empowerment for the Jewish people. In most of the Diaspora (the Soviet Union and the Arab states being glaring exceptions), the civil and political rights of Jewish communities were enshrined, bolstered by the widely shared taboo on antisemitic rhetoric and activity that coalesced alongside revelations of the horror of the Nazi concentration camps. More importantly, for the first time in two millennia, the Jews finally achieved their own state, with armed forces that proved eminently capable of defeating the threats to Israel’s existence from around the region.
We had been, in the parlance of the early theorists of Zionism, “normalized”—or at least we thought as much.
The age of empowerment was not a golden age. Jews still languishing in the Soviet Union were persecuted and forbidden to make aliyah. The flourishing of multiple armed Palestinian organizations after the 1967 war subjected Israelis and Diaspora Jews to terrorist outrages, among them airplane hijackings and gun attacks on synagogues. The United Nations, whose General Assembly passed a 1975 resolution equating Zionism with racism, became the main incubator of the loathing directed at Israel. The brief postwar honeymoon between the Jews and the political left ended around the same time, replaced with the defamatory barbs about “apartheid” and “Zionist racism” that still plague us today.
Even so, at the turn of this century, there was a notable deterioration. For much of the 1990s, the conflict between Israel and the Palestinians had seemed close to resolution, symbolized by the brief handshake on the White House lawn between the late Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO leader Yasser Arafat. But in 2000, five years after Rabin was assassinated in Tel Aviv, Arafat launched a second intifada against Israel, and the old hardline positions were reinstated. Much of the world followed Arafat’s cue, as demonstrated at the U.N.’s 2001 conference against racism in Durban, South Africa, held a few days before the Al-Qaeda atrocities in the United States on Sept. 11. There, NGOs and governments alike berated Israel, and Jewish delegates were subjected to the kind of abuse (“Hitler was right”) that has become all too common in the present day.
In tandem with the collapse in relations between Israel and the Palestinians, antisemitism returned with a vengeance, particularly in Europe, spurred by an unholy alliance of Islamist organizations rooted in the continent’s various Muslim communities, and a far left baying for Israeli and American blood after 9/11. It was in Pakistan, however, that the murder that came to symbolize this new reality occurred.
At the end of January 2002, Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl, an American Jew, was abducted from a hotel in Karachi by Islamist terrorists. A few days later, video surfaced online (at that time, the technology was still novel) of Pearl’s savage execution. After uttering his final words—“My father is Jewish, my mother is Jewish, I am Jewish”—Pearl was beheaded on camera by his captors.
To my mind, his sickening fate signaled the beginning of the revived trend that Jews are still confronting. I say that because this wasn’t a case of ugly rhetoric or graffiti, a smashed window or even an unsuspecting Jewish passerby getting punched in the face. This was a cold-blooded, ideologically driven murder that exposed the lethal violence that lurks inside every committed Jew-hater.
Last week, one of the terrorists involved in Pearl’s kidnapping and murder was reportedly eliminated during the Indian airstrikes on Pakistan undertaken in response to the killing of 26 civilians by Pakistani-backed terrorists in Kashmir on April 26. Abdul Rauf Azhar was a leader of the Jaish e-Mohammad terror organization who collaborated in Pearl’s abduction with fellow terrorists Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, one of the planners of the 9/11 attacks; and Omar Saeed Sheikh, a Pakistani national who grew up in England and briefly studied at my alma mater, the London School of Economics, before dropping out. Along with the murder of Pearl, Azhar was responsible for the 1999 hijacking of an Indian passenger plane, as well as attacks on the Indian parliament and an Indian army base in 2001 and 2016, respectively.
The significance of Azhar’s elimination now, when antisemitism is raging with far greater intensity than at the time of Pearl’s killing, should not be lost on anyone. During the 23 years that separate the deaths of Pearl and Azhar, Jews have endured insults and vandalism, assault and even murder. Much of this has tracked the troughs and peaks of conflict in the Middle East, especially the Second Lebanon War in 2006, and earlier wars in Gaza in 2008-09, 2014 and 2021.
Not all of the antisemitic outpouring is so closely connected. Some of the worst instances of hatred and violence, like the 2017 torture and murder of Sarah Halimi, an elderly Jewish woman living on her own in public housing in Paris, did not occur at a time of unusually high conflict in the Middle East. Rather, they were a consequence of the demonizing tropes and false claims about Jews that have become embedded in our culture over the course of this century.
We should feel a strong degree of satisfaction at the news that Azhar is dead and therefore unable to ruin the lives of other innocents like Daniel Pearl. However, that’s not the same as full justice, which would involve a comprehensive reckoning by politicians, influencers and thought leaders with the antisemitism that has stained our culture and our civilization. We know, more or less, where all this started. What we don’t know is where it will end.
The post When Did the Current Wave of Antisemitism Begin? first appeared on Algemeiner.com.
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Security Warning to Israelis Vacationing Abroad Ahead of holidays
A passenger arrives to a terminal at Ben Gurion international airport before Israel bans international flights, January 25, 2021. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – Ahead of the Jewish High Holidays, Israel’s National Security Council (NSC) published the latest threat assessment to Israelis abroad from terrorist groups to the public on Sunday, in order to increase the Israeli public’s awareness of the existing terrorist threats around the world and encourage individuals to take preventive action accordingly.
The NSC specified that the warning is an up-to-date reflection of the main trends in the activities of terrorist groups around the world and their impact on the level of threat posed to Israelis abroad during these times, but the travel warnings and restrictions themselves are not new.
“As the Gaza war continues and in parallel with the increasing threat of terrorism, the National Security Headquarters stated it has recognized a trend of worsening and increasing violent antisemitic incidents and escalating steps by anti-Israel groups, to the point of physically harming Israelis and Jews abroad. This is in light of, among other things, the anti-Israel narrative and the negative media campaign by pro-Palestinian elements — a trend that may encourage and motivate extremist elements to carry out terrorist activities against Israelis or Jews abroad,” the statement read.
“Therefore, the National Security Bureau is reinforcing its recommendation to the Israeli public to act with responsibility during this time when traveling abroad, to check the status of the National Security Bureau’s travel warnings (before purchasing tickets to the destination,) and to act in accordance with the travel warning recommendations and the level of risk in the country they are visiting,” it listed, adding that, as illustrated in the past year, these warnings are well-founded and reflect a tangible and valid threat potential.
The statement also emphasized the risk of sharing content on social media networks indicating current or past service in the Israeli security forces, as these posts increase the risk of being marked by various parties as a target. “Therefore, the National Security Council recommends that you do not upload to social networks, in any way, content that indicates service in the security forces, operational activity, or similar content, as well as real-time locations.”
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Israel Intensifies Gaza City Bombing as Rubio Arrives
Displaced Palestinians, fleeing northern Gaza due to an Israeli military operation, move southward after Israeli forces ordered residents of Gaza City to evacuate to the south, in the central Gaza Strip September 14, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Mahmoud Issa
Israeli forces destroyed at least 30 residential buildings in Gaza City and forced thousands of people from their homes, Palestinian officials said, as US Secretary of State Marco Rubio arrived on Sunday to discuss the future of the conflict.
Israel has said it plans to seize the city, where about a million Palestinians have been sheltering, as part of its declared aim of eliminating the terrorist group Hamas, and has intensified attacks on what it has called Hamas’ last bastion.
The group’s political leadership, which has engaged in on-and-off negotiations on a possible ceasefire and hostage release deal, was targeted by Israel in an airstrike in Doha on Tuesday in an attack that drew widespread condemnation.
Qatar will host an emergency Arab-Islamic summit on Monday to discuss the next moves. Rubio said Washington wanted to talk about how to free the 48 hostages – of whom 20 are believed to be still alive – still held by Hamas in Gaza and rebuild the coastal strip.
“What’s happened, has happened,” he said. “We’re gonna meet with them (the Israeli leadership). We’re gonna talk about what the future holds,” Rubio said before heading to Israel where he will stay until Tuesday.
ABRAHAM ACCORDS AT RISK
He was expected to visit the Western Wall Jewish prayer site in Jerusalem on Sunday with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and hold talks with him during the visit.
US officials described Tuesday’s strike on the territory of a close US ally as a unilateral escalation that did not serve American or Israeli interests. Rubio and US President Donald Trump both met Qatar’s Prime Minister Mohammed bin Abdulrahman Al-Thani on Friday.
Netanyahu signed an agreement on Thursday to push ahead with a settlement expansion plan that would cut across West Bank land that the Palestinians seek for a state – a move the United Arab Emirates warned would undermine the US-brokered Abraham accords that normalized UAE relations with Israel.
Israel, which blocked all food from entering Gaza for 11 weeks earlier this year, has been allowing more aid into the enclave since late July to prevent further food shortages, though the United Nations says far more is needed.
It says it wants civilians to leave Gaza City before it sends more ground forces in. Tens of thousands of people are estimated to have left but hundreds of thousands remain in the area. Hamas has called on people not to leave.
Israeli army forces have been operating inside at least four eastern suburbs for weeks, turning most of at least three of them into wastelands. It is closing in on the center and the western areas of the territory, where most of the displaced people are taking shelter.
Many are reluctant to leave, saying there is not enough space or safety in the south, where Israel has told them to go to what it has designated as a humanitarian zone.
Some say they cannot afford to leave while others say they were hoping the Arab leaders meeting on Monday in Qatar would pressure Israel to scrap its planned offensive.
“The bombardment intensified everywhere and we took down the tents, more than twenty families, we do not know where to go,” said Musbah Al-Kafarna, displaced in Gaza City.
Israel said it had completed five waves of air strikes on Gaza City over the past week, targeting more than 500 sites, including Hamas reconnaissance and sniper sites, buildings containing tunnel openings and weapons depots.
Local officials, who do not distinguish between militant and civilian casualties, say at least 40 people were killed by Israeli fire across the enclave, a least 28 in Gaza City alone.
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Turkey Warns of Escalation as Israel Expands Strikes Beyond Gaza
Turkey’s President Tayyip Erdogan speaks during a press conference with Greek Prime Minister Kyriakos Mitsotakis (not seen) at the Presidential Palace in Ankara, Turkey, May 13, 2024. Photo: REUTERS/Umit Bektas
i24 News – An Israeli strike targeting Hamas officials in Qatar has sparked unease among several Middle Eastern countries that host leaders of the group, with Turkey among the most alarmed.
Officials in Ankara are increasingly worried about how far Israel might go in pursuing those it holds responsible for the October 7 attacks.
Israel’s prime minister effectively acknowledged that the Qatar operation failed to eliminate the Hamas leadership, while stressing the broader point the strike was meant to make: “They enjoy no immunity,” the government said.
On X, Prime Minister Netanyahu went further, writing that “the elimination of Hamas leaders would put an end to the war.”
A senior Turkish official, speaking on condition of anonymity, summed up Ankara’s reaction: “The attack in Qatar showed that the Israeli government is ready to do anything.”
Legally and diplomatically, Turkey occupies a delicate position. As a NATO member, any military operation or targeted killing on its soil could inflame tensions within the alliance and challenge mutual security commitments.
Analysts caution, however, that Israel could opt for covert measures, operations carried out without public acknowledgement, a prospect that has increased anxiety in governments across the region.
Israeli officials remain defiant. In an interview with Ynet, Minister Ze’ev Elkin said: “As long as we have not stopped them, we will pursue them everywhere in the world and settle our accounts with them.” The episode underscores growing fears that efforts to hunt Hamas figures beyond Gaza could widen regional friction and complicate diplomatic relationships.