The findings will be formally presented at the Senate in Palazzo Giustiniani on March 3.
According to the CDEC, anti-Israel animus was a key ideological driver of the surge in antisemitism.
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As Orthodox Union and other Jewish groups condemn settler rampage, many avoid mentioning Benjamin Netanyahu
WASHINGTON (JTA) — As American Jewish organizations responded to Sunday’s settler riot in the West Bank, most began with statements of condemnation.
One began with a question: “How can such a thing happen?”
“How could it come to this, that Jewish young men should ransack and burn homes and cars?” continued the statement from Rabbi Moshe Hauer, executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, who added that “we cannot understand or accept this.”
He concluded with a note of desperation: “What happened yesterday must never, ever happen again.”
Hauer’s anguish was all the more notable because it came from a group whose constituency, American Orthodox Jews, has historically sympathized with the movement to create Jewish settlements in the West Bank. And Hauer’s statement did something else that many other groups did not: It appeared to question the leadership of Israel’s prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu.
“Attacking a village does not deserve to be called ‘taking the law into your own hands,’” Hauer’s statement said. “This is not the law; this is undisciplined and random fury. Actions like these demonstrate the critical need for clear and strong leadership.”
While Hauer didn’t mention Netanyahu by name (and didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment) the implication was clear: On Sunday, in response to the riot in the town of Huwara, Netanyahu said, “I ask – even when the blood is boiling – not to take the law into one’s hands.”
The Orthodox Union has for years criticized U.S. pressure on Israel to accept a two-state solution to the conflict with the Palestinians or to share Jerusalem. In 2007 it stood out among Jewish groups leading criticism of the then Israeli government for contemplating a Palestinian role in Jerusalem.
Beyond the O.U, Jewish groups decried the actions of the settlers but mostly avoided mentioning the Israeli government or its leader. Instead, some looked to Israel’s president, Isaac Herzog, whose role is largely ceremonial but who has sought to broker compromise amid the current contentious government. He had issued a “forceful condemnation” of the rioting on Sunday, saying that security forces, not civilians “committing violence against innocents,” should respond to terrorism.
Affirming and quoting the Israeli prime minister was once a reflex for legacy groups when commenting on crises in Israel. But times have changed. Israel’s government includes far-right parties and ministers who are themselves settlers and have long advocated harsher measures in response to Palestinian terror.
One official, National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir, was once convicted of incitement to violence. And some coalition members have sympathized with the rioters in the wake of the rampage. Against that backdrop, Netanyahu did not feature in many American Jewish organizations’ statements. Others condemned the prime minister for his links to the far right or what they saw as his government’s tepid response.
“Though some Israeli leaders, including the prime minister, called for restraint, the government failed to prevent or quickly curtail this unacceptable violence,” Rabbi Rick Jacobs, president of the Union for Reform Judaism, said in an emailed statement. “Those responsible must be held accountable and safety and security for Jews and Palestinians alike must prevail.”
The Anti-Defamation League and American Jewish Committee both cited Herzog’s statement, and declared, respectively, their “outrage” and condemnation of “this violence in the strongest terms.”
The AJC declined further comment, and the ADL, asked to elaborate on its statement, condemned lawmakers who incite violence, while avoiding mentioning the fact that they are members of Israel’s governing coalition.
“There is also no excuse for the incitement to violence we heard from a few political leaders, including some Israeli Knesset Members,” a spokesman said in an email. “We join Israeli President Herzog’s call for a de-escalation of violence, and urge Israeli law enforcement to ensure that those involved in the Huwara violence are held accountable.”
Asked for a statement, William Daroff, the CEO of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, did not mention the government or Netanyahu. “I condemn without reservation the riots and violence in Hawara,” he said in an interview. “There is no excuse for lawless vigilantism.”
In a statement later, Daroff suggested that if Israeli politicians fail to condemn the settler violence, there could be consequences for the relationship with Jews overseas.
“These criminal acts of violence and vandalism harm Jewish sovereignty and Israel’s relationship with the global Jewish diaspora,” he said. “We urge Knesset members to speak out against these attacks while pursuing a peaceful resolution.”
The Jewish organizations approached for this story did not reply when asked what they planned to do if Netanyahu fails to take action. A number of regional Jewish organizations and rabbis have previously called for boycotts of far-right coalition members if and when they tour the United States.
Israeli authorities arrested a number of the rioters, and then let them go. No plans for prosecution have been reported yet.
The Conservative movement’s Rabbinical Assembly stood out for extending its condolences to both Jewish and Arab victims of violence on Sunday — an equivalence that is extremely rare in Jewish groups’ statements. The group’s message, written in English and Hebrew, mentions both the family of the two Israelis who were shot while driving through Huwara, and the family of the Palestinian who reportedly was shot dead while pleading with settlers to leave his village alone.
“We are in pain and join the condolences to the families of those killed, among them the Yaniv family and the Al-Aqtash family and wish a speedy and full recovery to all who were injured,” the group said, referring to the Israeli and Palestinian victims, respectively. “We expect our government, the IDF, and the police, to act to prevent harm to people and to property, and to try any person who has chosen to harm another person.”
Americans for Peace Now and J Street both called on the Biden administration to use its leverage to get Netanyahu to take action.
“Netanyahu’s extremist coalition is demonstrating that it will not be stopped by polite protestations or vague agreements,” J Street said. “Only by setting clear redlines and tangible consequences can the US hope to deter this government.”
Americans for Peace Now similarly called on Biden to “hold the government of Israel accountable for both its unrestrained settlement activity and its enabling of settler violence,” while the liberal rabbinic human rights group T’ruah said the Israeli government “has fueled the incitement that led to this attack.”
The Israel Policy Forum, a group that backs a two-state outcome, decried the lack of accountability for the rioters for the attacks on the Hawara residents. “Their only crimes were being Palestinians living in proximity to a spot where a different Palestinian committed a terrorist attack, and the settlers who rampaged through their homes and streets unimpeded, without any real consequences, represent the daily injustice that Palestinians face as non-citizens on their land with no recourse to any responsible higher authority,” it said in a statement.
Some organizations praised Netanyahu’s government for speaking out against the riot. The Jewish Federations of North America commended “the Government of Israel for speaking out quickly to lower tensions.” And the American Israel Public Affairs Committee appeared to tie the settlers’ vigilantism to Palestinian terrorism.
“As Israel’s Prime Minister and President clearly indicated, vigilante action cannot be tolerated,” its spokesman said. “Terrorism will not decline as long as the Palestinian leadership continues incitement, rewards terrorism with payments to terrorists and their families, and encourages the public celebration of Israeli fatalities.”
At least one organizational leader echoed the sentiments of Israeli officials who sympathized with the rioters. Morton Klein, CEO of the Zionist Organization of America, said in an interview that he condemned the rioters, but also understood what drove them.
“I don’t believe that civilians should be taking the law into their own hands,” he said. “I oppose civilians taking on their own hands, that’s for sure, but you know, after constant murder of people, you know, people lose control.”
Klein said Israel needed to “put enormous pressure in every way you can” on Palestinians in order to quell violence in the West Bank. Asked whether Israel also deserved pressure to bring the settler rioters to justice, Klein said that was not a concern of his.
“Arabs care more about Arabs than they do about non-Arabs and Jews care more about Jews than they do about non-Jews,” said Klein, who met in person with Ben-Gvir last week in Israel. “It’s a natural human trait.”
—
The post As Orthodox Union and other Jewish groups condemn settler rampage, many avoid mentioning Benjamin Netanyahu appeared first on Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
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Antisemitism Spikes to Record Levels in Italy, New Data Shows
A protester uses a pole to break a window at Milano Centrale railway station, during a demonstration that is part of a nationwide “Let’s Block Everything” protest in solidarity with Gaza, with activists also calling for a halt to arms shipments to Israel, in Milan, Italy, Sept. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Greco
Antisemitism in Italy surged to record levels last year, according to newly published figures, as Jews and Israelis across Europe continued to face a relentlessly hostile environment including harassment, vandalism, and targeted attacks.
In Italy, the Milan-based CDEC Foundation (Center of Contemporary Jewish Documentation) confirmed that antisemitic incidents in the country almost reached four digits for the first time last year.
Of 1,492 reports submitted through official monitoring channels, the CDEC formally classified a record high 963 cases as antisemitic, according to the European Jewish Congress and Union of Italian Jewish Communities (UCEI), the main representative body of Jews in Italy.
By comparison, there were 877 recorded incidents in 2024, preceded by 453 such outrages in 2023 and just 241 in 2022. The data fits with several reports showing antisemitism surged across the Western world, especially the US and Europe, following the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
“The main ideological matrix that has fueled hatred against Jews is anti-Semitism linked to Israel – i.e., the transfer of anti-Jewish myths, such as blood libel, racism by election, and hatred of mankind,” the organization stated.
In May, for example, a restaurant in Naples ejected an Israeli family, telling them “Zionists are not welcome here.” Months earlier, demonstrators at a January protest in Bologna vandalized a synagogue, painting “Justice for a free Gaza.”
Most of the incidents, 643, occurred online on digital platforms, while 320 involved physical acts such as graffiti, vandalism, and desecration of synagogues in addition to discrimination, threats, and assaults.
The surge in antisemitism came amid multiple surveys showing pervasive antisemitic attitudes among the Italian public.
Around 15 percent of Italians consider physical attacks on Jewish people “entirely or fairly justifiable,” according to one survey published in September.
The survey, conducted on Sept. 24-26 by the pollster SWG among a national sample of 800 adults, found that 18 percent of those interviewed also believe antisemitic graffiti on walls and other public spaces is legitimate.
About one-fifth of respondents said it was reasonable to attack professors who expressed pro-Israeli positions or for businesses to reject Israeli customers.
Months earlier, in June, the Italian research institute Eurispes, in partnership with Pasquale Angelosanto, the national coordinator for the fight against antisemitism, polled a representative sample of the country’s population and found that 37.9 percent of Italians believe that Jews “only think about accumulating money” while 58.2 percent see Jews as “a closed community.”
About 40 percent either did not know or did not believe that 6 million Jews died in the Holocaust, and the majority of respondents — 54 percent — regarded antisemitic crimes as isolated incidents and not part of any broader trend.
The report also showed elevated levels of anti-Israel belief among younger Italians, with 50.85 percent of those 18-24 thinking that “Jews in Palestine took others’ territories.”
The Institute for Jewish Policy Research estimates the number of Jews in Italy as ranging from 26,800 to 48,910 depending on which standards of observance one selects. Eurispes places the number at 30,000.
In January, the Anti-Defamation League released the newest results of its Global 100 survey which found that 26 percent of Italians — 13.1 million adults — embrace six or more antisemitic stereotypes.
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NYC Officials Sue Mamdani Over Failure to Disclose Docs on Decision to Scrap IHRA Definition of Antisemitism
Candidate Zohran Mamdani speaks during a Democratic New York City mayoral primary debate, June 4, 2025, in New York, US. Photo: Yuki Iwamura/Pool via REUTERS
A group of Queens elected officials and civic leaders has filed suit against New York City Mayor Zohran Mamdani, accusing his administration of stonewalling a Freedom of Information Law (FOIL) request related to his decision to revoke an executive order adopting the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism.
The lawsuit centers on Mamdani’s move on his first day in office in January to rescind a series of executive orders issued by his predecessor, former Mayor Eric Adams, to combat antisemitism. Among the orders revoked was one formally adopting the IHRA definition, which has been widely embraced by governments and institutions across the democratic world.
Plaintiffs include Queens Councilmembers Joann Ariola and Vickie Paladino, along with Queens Civic Congress President Warren Schreiber, the Queens Daily Eagle reported last week.
They argue that the mayor’s office has failed to provide adequate transparency regarding the rationale behind rescinding the IHRA order, a move critics say weakened the city’s formal commitment to combating antisemitism at a time of rising anti-Jewish incidents both locally and nationally.
“The purpose of the FOIL applications at issue in this proceeding is to decipher and obtain the documentary trail of information illuminating Mayor Mamdani’s motives, policies, programs, legislative initiatives, and budgetary priorities implicated within the EO [executive order],” the lawsuit reads.
In their filing, the plaintiffs accuse the administration of having “stonewalled, deflected, delayed, and denied” their FOIL request, calling the response timeline “arbitrary and capricious.” Although the city’s Law Department acknowledged receipt of the request and projected a response date in April, the plaintiffs contend that such delays are unacceptable given the gravity of the issue. The lawsuit characterizes Mamdani’s actions as “anti-Israel” and “anti-Jewish.”
IHRA — an intergovernmental organization comprising dozens of countries including the US and Israel — adopted the “working definition” of antisemitism in 2016. Since then, the definition has been widely accepted by Jewish groups and lawmakers across the political spectrum, and it is now used by hundreds of governing institutions, including the US State Department, European Union, and United Nations. Law enforcement also uses it as a tool for matters such as hate-crime investigations and sentencing.
According to the definition, antisemitism “is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities.” It provides 11 specific, contemporary examples of antisemitism in public life, the media, schools, the workplace, and in the religious sphere. Beyond classic antisemitic behavior associated with the likes of the medieval period and Nazi Germany, the examples include denial of the Holocaust and newer forms of antisemitism targeting Israel such as demonizing the Jewish state, denying its right to exist, and holding it to standards not expected of any other democratic state.
Jewish community advocates have expressed alarm that rescinding the executive order could signal a retreat from clear standards at a moment when antisemitic incidents have surged in the two years following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
The Israeli government and leading US Jewish groups sharply criticized Mamdani’s decision.
Mamdani’s supporters say the move was part of a broader action by Mamdani to revoke all executive orders issued by Adams since Sept. 26, 2024, when the ex-mayor was indicted for corruption, charges of which have since been dismissed. Mamdani’s office has framed the move as an administrative reset rather than a targeted policy shift, saying the new mayor sought to begin his term with a clean slate.
However, critics argue that lumping the IHRA adoption together with other rescinded orders was, at best, careless and, at worst, reflective of an ideological discomfort with pro-Israel policy frameworks.
The New York Times reported last month that Mamdani “knew from the moment he won the election” in November that he would revoke the executive orders related to Israel and antisemitism but believed rescinding them would upset Jewish groups whose concerns he spent months trying to allay. Therefore, the report continued, Mamdani’s team laid out a few options, and he chose to rescind every order that Adams issued after his indictment, “allowing him to frame the choice as a matter of good governance.”
The lawsuit now seeks a court order compelling the mayor’s office to produce internal communications and documentation explaining the decision-making process behind the revocation.
The IHRA definition could have been problematic for Mamdani, a far-left democratic socialist and avowed anti-Zionist who has made anti-Israel activism a cornerstone of his political career and been widely accused of promoting antisemitic rhetoric. A supporter of boycotting all entities tied to Israel, he has repeatedly refused to recognize Israel’s right to exist as a Jewish state; routinely accused Israel of “apartheid” and “genocide”; and refused to clearly condemn the phrase “globalize the intifada,” which has been used to call for violence against Jews and Israelis worldwide.
Leading members of the Jewish community in New York have expressed alarm about Mamdani’s electoral victory, fearing what may come in a city already experiencing a surge in antisemitic hate crimes.
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China Unleashes ‘Antisemitic Wave’ Amid Gaza Conflict, New Report Shows
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian and Chinese President Xi Jinping shake hands as they meet, in Beijing, China, Sept. 2, 2025. Photo: Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
The Chinese Communist Party has embraced overt antisemitic messaging in its domestic propaganda in recent years, according to a new report which ties the move to both geopolitical rivalry with the United States and efforts to curry favor with Arab and Muslim countries hostile to Israel.
The Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI), a prominent think tank based in Israel, documents in the report how China’s authoritarian government has deliberately cultivated antisemitism among the population and internationally as a strategy.
One key trend detailed by the study’s author, JPPI senior fellow Shalom Salomon Wald, is the way in Chinese media that Israel, Jews, and Judaism have grown conflated.
“In popular discourse, Israel and Jews are more or less synonymous. This is not much different from the West, where the anti-Israeli presentation of the Gaza war by official and social media is regularly causing verbal and physical violence against local Jews,” Wald writes. “Chinese officials, intellectuals, and news providers are generally aware of the difference between Israel and world Jewry. Officials acknowledge the distinction when it suits them, for example, when they insist that their criticism of Israel has no antisemitic connotation. They often fail to draw the distinction when it does not suit them.”
The report identifies 2021 as when “the Chinese government chose to harden its attitude toward Israel and its Jewish supporters. Chinese contacts informed some Israeli experts of this policy change. Whether [Chinese President] Xi Jinping himself made the relevant decisions is not known. No single reason, but a convergence of events caused this change.”
Writing in The Jerusalem Post, Wald identifies at least three factors driving China’s shift toward anti-Zionism.
The first is economic, with Israel walking back its relationship with China under US pressure.
“Israel, admonished by the United States, made Chinese investments, particularly in hi-tech and infrastructure projects, more difficult,” he writes. “The Chinese expressed their resentment quite openly.”
The second is geopolitical. “China was in the midst of expanding its presence in the Arab Middle East, offering major economic cooperation and long-lasting political ties,” Wald explains. “A harder attitude against Israel was a cheap sweetener for such offers.”
The third is the perception that, due to internal issues, Israel has grown weaker: “Israel’s domestic crisis eroded its ‘strongman’ image in Chinese eyes. A country wracked by mass demonstrations and numerous ineffective elections could no longer be taken as seriously as it had been.”
However, recent Israel-Hamas conflicts in Gaza were also key catalysts for upticks in antisemitism.
“Antisemitic waves washed over China’s social and official media following the Gaza conflicts of 2021 and 2023-25. They were authorized, if not initiated, by the Chinese government in pursuit of China’s political goals and based on anti-Jewish tropes,” states the report, which notes the hostility especially surged following Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, massacre across southern Israel.
“Chinese media began spreading antisemitic tropes under the cover of criticism of Israel’s military actions,” it continues. “While similar denunciations conflating Israel, Zionists, and Jews occurred in other countries too, in China all political speech is tightly monitored and censored if it is not in line with official positions. If antisemitism was spreading on China’s media, it meant that it was officially sanctioned. It appeared in government sources and public media, in social media, and in universities.”
Wald notes in the JPPI report that Beijing’s turn toward antisemitism will have a long-term impact on education.
“Universities are among the most influential promoters of Chinese antisemitism,” he states. “As they train China’s next generation, they risk transmitting current prejudices to some of China’s future leaders. Today, almost all Chinese government leaders and most Communist Party high officials are university graduates.”
The report describes how the rise in academic antisemitism in China has destroyed years of positive scholarship, quoting Prof. Ping Zhang of Tel Aviv University who said that “the foundation of the good relationship built between the two sides over the past three decades has been shattered.”
JPPI’s research notes that during the 20th century, China’s leaders originally supported Zionism. Sun Yat-sen, the first provisional president of the Republic of China and known today as the “father of modern China,” wrote in 1920 to the head of the Shanghai Zionist Association that he favored the “movement to restore your wonderful and historic nation which has contributed so much to the civilization of the world.” Similarly, in 1948 the Communist Party’s People’s Daily praised the founding of Israel.
Since then, however, China’s sympathies have shifted dramatically, recognizing a Palestinian state in 1988 and, more recently, moving closer to Hamas and Iran, whose leaders openly promote antisemitism and seek Israel’s destruction.
This month, for example, a Chinese military attaché in Tehran presented Brigadier General Bahman Behmard, commander of the Iranian Air Force, with a scale model of China’s J-20 fifth-generation stealth fighter. Even though no official contract was announced, experts interpreted the Chinese gesture as a sharp warning to the US and its ally Israel amid mounting fears of renewed conflict in the Middle East.
Days earlier, a new study revealed the extent to which the Iranian regime used Chinese technology to silence dissent during recent nationwide anti-government protests, imposing near-total internet shutdowns and disrupting satellite communications while carrying out a brutal crackdown. According to the international human rights organization Article 19, China has provided material and technical support to Iran since at least 2010, bolstering its surveillance and censorship capabilities as Chinese firms continue operating in the country despite international sanctions.
China, a key diplomatic and economic backer of Tehran, has moved to deepen ties with the regime in recent years, signing a 25-year cooperation agreement, holding joint naval drills, and continuing to purchase Iranian oil despite US sanctions.
China is the largest importer of Iranian oil, with nearly 90 percent of Iran’s crude and condensate exports going to Beijing.
According to some media reports, China may be even helping Iran rebuild its decimated air defenses and ballistic missile program following the 12-day war with Israel in June.
Closer to home, Beijing has also lambasted the Jewish state for its increasingly close ties with Taiwan. China considers Taiwan, a nearby island run by a democratic government, as a renegade Chinese province that must be reunited with the mainland — by force, if necessary.
In September, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke to a delegation of 250 US state legislators at the Foreign Ministry in Jerusalem, warning of China’s role in demonizing Israel.
There is “an effort to besiege — not isolate as much as besiege Israel — that is orchestrated by the same forces that supported Iran,” Netanyahu said. One is China. And the other is Qatar. They are organizing an attack on Israel … [through] the social media of the Western world and the United States.”
That same month, the Institute for National Security Studies (INSS), an Israeli think tank, released a report examining how China has increasingly used state media and covert campaigns to spread anti-Israel and antisemitic narratives in the US. The effort includes the promotion of conspiracy theories about “Jewish control” of politics, the economy, and the media.
While China’s primary aim is to target and undermine the United States, according to the study, Israel ends up suffering “collateral damage” as a result.