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ADL Reports Overall Drop in US Antisemitic Incidents, Rise in Assaults
A man with an Israeli flag looks on next to police officers working at the site where two Israeli embassy staff were shot dead near the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, DC, US, May 21, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst
Antisemitic incidents in the US decreased overall in 2025, but violent attacks targeting American Jews remained at alarmingly high levels, according to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), whose new report pointed to several lingering areas of concern.
The ADL on Wednesday released its annual “Audit of Antisemitic Incidents” for the last calendar year, tallying 6,274 incidents of antisemitic assault, harassment, and vandalism in 2025, an average of 17 such outrages per day.
While antisemitic assaults increased by just 4 percent, from 196 in 2024 to 203 in 2025, perpetrators increased their use of “deadly” weapons by nearly 40 percent, the ADL said. Incidents of assault involving a deadly weapon increased to 32 in 2025 from 23 in 2024.
The advocacy group noted that the upward shift was reflected in the shocking murders of Jews in antisemitic attacks in the US for the first time since 2019. Two Israeli embassy staffers — a young couple set be engaged — were shot dead in Washington, DC last May, and weeks later a firebombing in Colorado claimed the life of an octogenarian. In both crimes, the alleged killers cited anti-Zionism as their motivating ideology.
Other statistics dropped by digit double digits, according to the ADL. Antisemitic vandalism was down 21 percent in 2025. So too was antisemitic harassment, which decreased 39 percent. However, both categories still combined for a total 6,071 incidents, a figure which eclipses the number of hate crimes the FBI said was committed against African Americans in 2024. For context, the Black community is roughly 7 times larger than the Jewish community.
“Behind every one of these incidents is a real person: a family threatened at their synagogue, a rabbi attacked on the street, a student harassed on campus,” ADL senior vice president Oren Segal said in a statement released with the report. “[The year] 2025 brought some of the most violent antisemitic attacks in recent memory. Even as overall incidents declined, the surge in physical assaults is a stark reminder that a historically high level of antisemitism puts Jewish lives at risk.”
“The safety of Jewish communities depends on our collective willingness to meet this moment with urgency, which is what we’re doing every day at ADL,” he added.
The ADL recorded its steepest decline on campuses, where Jewish university students have reported alarming levels of anti-Jewish bias often disguised as or justified by anti-Israel animus. Such antisemitic incidents fell 66 percent to 583 incidents in 2025, down from 1,694 the previous year. The plunge coincided with the second term of US President Donald Trump, whose administration has launched dozens of federal investigations into campus antisemitism and impounded taxpayer funding from schools found to have failed to address the issue.
Last year saw a wide range of antisemitic incidents covered by The Algemeiner. These included, among many others, a public-school principal inveighing against “Jew money,” an attempted arson at the Hillel International chapter in San Francisco, California, and the movement of some conservative students into the far-right ecosystem of antisemitism — a path cleared by Nicholas Fuentes, Candace Owens, Kanye West, and troops of social media influencers. In New York City, home to the world’s largest Jewish population outside of Israel, Jews were targeted in the majority of all hate crimes despite comprising a small fraction of the total population.
The wave of hatred has changed how American Jews perceive their status in the US. According to the results of a previous survey commissioned by the ADL and the Jewish Federations of North America, a striking 57 percent of American Jews believe “that antisemitism is now a normal Jewish experience.”
The survey results revealed other disturbing trends: Jewish victims are internalizing their experiences, as 74 percent did not report what happened to them to “any institution or organization”; Jewish youth are bearing the brunt of antisemitism, having faced communications which aim to exclude Jews or delegitimize their concerns about rising hate; and the cultural climate has instilled a pervasive fear that the non-Jewish community will not act as a moral guardrail against continued violence and threats.
On Wednesday ADL chief executive officer Jonathan Greenblatt committed his organization to reversing this trend.
“Our 2025 audit, which shows that it was one of the most violent years for American Jews on record, is a reminder of how dramatically the threat landscape has shifted. Numbers that would have shocked us five years ago are now our floor,” Greenblatt said. “People are being murdered because of antisemitism on American soil, and thousands more are threatened. ADL will not stop until that baseline changes.”
Follow Dion J. Pierre @DionJPierre.
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Report: US, Israel Preparing for Resumptions of Strikes Against Iran
US President Donald Trump speaks during an event to sign a memorandum in the Oval Office at the White House in Washington, DC, US, May 5, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Evan Vucci
i24 News – The United States and Israel are engaged in intense preparations — the largest since the cease-fire took effect — for the possible resumption of attacks against Iran as early as next week, the New York Times reported Saturday citing two Middle East officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity.
Meanwhile, the Israeli Mako News reported Israeli official sources as saying that US President Donald Trump is expected to convene his closest team of advisors in the next 24 hours to make a final decision on the Iran matter. Israel estimates that a decision on military action may be made very soon, the report added.
According to NYT, should Trump decide to resume military strikes, options include more aggressive raids targeting Iranian military and infrastructure targets, US officials said.
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Trump Says Xi Agrees Iran Must Open Strait, But No Sign China Will Weigh In
US President Donald Trump participates in events at the Great Hall of the People and does a greeting with the President of the People’s Republic of China Xi Jinping May 14, 2026, in Beijing China during a trip focused on trade, regional security, and strengthening bilateral ties between the world’s two largest economies. Photo: Kenny Holston/Pool via REUTERS/File Photo
US President Donald Trump said Chinese President Xi Jinping had agreed Tehran must reopen the Strait of Hormuz, though China gave no indication it would weigh in.
Flying back from Beijing on Friday after two days of talks with Xi, Trump said he was considering whether to lift US sanctions on Chinese oil companies buying Iranian oil. China is the biggest buyer of Iranian oil.
“I’m not asking for any favors because when you ask for favors, you have to do favors in return,” Trump said when asked by a reporter on Air Force One whether Xi had made a firm commitment to put pressure on the Iranians to reopen the strait.
Xi did not comment on his discussions with Trump about Iran, although China’s foreign ministry criticized the war, calling it a conflict “which should never have happened, has no reason to continue.”
‘WE WANT THE STRAITS OPEN’
Iran has effectively shut the strait, which carried one-fifth of global oil and liquefied natural gas supply before the US and Israel launched attacks on February 28. The disruption to shipping has caused the biggest oil supply crisis in history, pushing up oil prices.
Ebrahim Azizi, who heads the Iranian parliament’s national security committee, said on Saturday that Tehran had prepared a mechanism to manage traffic through the strait along a designated route that would be unveiled soon.
Azizi said only commercial vessels and parties cooperating with Iran would benefit, and that fees would be collected for specialized services provided under the mechanism.
Thousands of Iranians were killed in the US and Israeli airstrikes. Thousands more have been killed in Lebanon in fighting between Israel and the Iran-backed group Hezbollah, though Israel and Lebanon agreed on Friday to a 45-day extension of a ceasefire that has tamped down the conflict there.
The US paused its attacks last month but began a port blockade. As of Saturday, 78 commercial ships had been redirected and four disabled to ensure compliance with the blockade, the US military said.
Tehran, which carried out strikes against Israel, US bases and Gulf states after the war began, has said it will not unblock the strait until the US ends its blockade. Trump has threatened to resume attacks if Iran does not agree to a deal.
“We don’t want them to have a nuclear weapon, we want the straits open,” Trump said in Beijing, alongside Xi.
Iran, which has long denied it intends to build a nuclear weapon, has refused to end nuclear research or relinquish its hidden stockpile of enriched uranium.
Iranian Foreign Minister Abbas Araqchi said Tehran had received messages from the US indicating Washington was willing to continue talks.
Pakistan has been mediating between Washington and Tehran. Iranian news agency Nournews said Interior Minister Eskandar Momeni had held “detailed” discussions with his visiting Pakistani counterpart on Iran-Pakistan relations and the prospects for resuming peace talks, but gave no details.
TRUMP LOSING PATIENCE
Trump, who told Fox News’ “Hannity” program in an interview aired on Thursday that he was losing patience with Iran, said Tehran “should make a deal.”
Oil prices rose around 3 percent to around $109 a barrel on Friday [O/R] on concerns about a lack of progress in resolving the conflict.
Talks on ending the war, which has become a liability for Trump ahead of US congressional elections in November, have been on hold since last week when Iran and the US each rejected the other’s most recent proposals.
Araqchi said on Friday that Iran would welcome Chinese input, adding that Tehran was trying to give diplomacy a chance but did not trust the US, which has curtailed previous rounds of talks by launching air strikes.
When the US and Israel launched their attacks on Iran at the end of February, they said one of their aims was to weaken the authorities so Iranians could topple the government.
There has been little sign of organized dissent in Iran during the war, and rights groups say the government has cracked down heavily on its opponents.
Iran’s judiciary said on Saturday that 39 people had been executed for collaborating with Israeli or US spy agencies, or taking part in “terror” or armed unrest, since the war started, the judiciary’s news agency Mizan reported.
It said 36 “medium-level” dissidents had received long prison sentences.
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Tens of Thousands March in London in Separate Immigration, Pro‑Palestinian Protests
Protesters take part in a “Unite the Kingdom” rally organised by British anti-immigration activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, also known as Tommy Robinson, in London, Britain, May 16, 2026. REUTERS/Hannah McKay
Tens of thousands of people marched through central London on Saturday in two separate protests – one against high levels of immigration and another in support of Palestinians.
Police deployed 4,000 officers, including reinforcements from outside the capital, and pledged “the most assertive possible use of our powers” in what they called their biggest public order operation in years.
By 1200 GMT, shortly after both marches started, police said they had made 11 arrests for a range of offenses. They had earlier forecast turnout of at least 80,000.
Prime Minister Keir Starmer on Friday accused organizers of the Unite the Kingdom march of “peddling hate and division, plain and simple.”
The march was organized by anti-Islam activist Stephen Yaxley-Lennon, known as Tommy Robinson. The government barred 11 people it described as “foreign far-right agitators” from entering Britain to address the protest.
A previous protest led by Robinson in September drew around 150,000 people, police said, and featured a video address by US tech billionaire Elon Musk. More than 20 people were arrested, and police are still seeking more than 50 suspects.
MARCHERS WAVE BRITISH AND ENGLISH FLAGS
On Saturday, Robinson supporters gathered in central London, waving mainly British and English flags.
“I think that too much migration – not migration, but too much migration – is causing a lot of problems, upsetting a delicate balance here,” said Allison Parr, who also criticized net-zero environmental policies.
Annual net migration approached 900,000 in 2022 and 2023, but fell back to around 200,000 last year after tighter work visa rules.
Concern over immigration – including the arrival of asylum seekers on small boats – has weighed on Starmer’s popularity and boosted the right-wing Reform UK party, whose leader Nigel Farage has distanced himself from Robinson.
Some protesters chanted abuse about Starmer.
Robinson, who has convictions for assault, stalking and other offenses, urged supporters this week to act peacefully in what he billed as “the greatest patriotic display the world has ever seen.”
Earlier this year, he traveled to the US, where he met a State Department official and addressed supporters about what he called “the dangers of Islam” and “the Islamification of Great Britain.”
Census data showed 6.5 percent of people in England and Wales identified as Muslim in 2021, up from 4.9 percent in 2011.
PRO-PALESTINIAN PROTESTERS MARK NAKBA DAY
Nearby, pro-Palestinian demonstrators held a march to mark Nakba Day, commemorating Palestinians’ loss of land in the 1948 war that followed the creation of Israel. “Nakba” means catastrophe in Arabic.
The march also drew those opposing the Unite the Kingdom rally, alongside predominantly Palestinian flags.
London has recently seen a spate of arson attacks on Jewish sites, and two Jewish men were stabbed last month in an incident being treated as terrorism.
Police said repeated large pro-Palestinian marches – 33 since the Hamas-led attack on Israel in October 2023 – had left many Jewish people feeling too intimidated to enter central London.
While protesters held a range of views, police said they routinely made arrests for racially and religiously aggravated public order offenses, inciting racial hatred or supporting proscribed organizations.
The government said police would arrest protesters who chanted “globalize the intifada,” a reference to Palestinian uprisings against Israel that many British Jews view as inciting antisemitism.
Some protesters on Saturday chanted “Death to the IDF”, referring to the Israeli army – language that police said had previously been a reason for arrests when aimed at Jewish people.