The escalation of antisemitism in the wake of the Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 terror massacre in Israel has paved the way for attacks on Jewish communities around the world. For the duration of the past year, schools, community centers and houses of worship have faced threats, intimidation and physical violence.

Rabbi Moshe Hauer, the executive vice president of the Orthodox Union, told Fox News Digital that throughout 2024, the “level of presumed security” the American Jewish community has lived with has shifted. “That’s difficult, when you have a place that you call home, and suddenly you don’t feel so at home.” With the environment of “rolling antisemitism” in the U.S. becoming “an accepted part of daily life,” Hauer said the issue “is still looked at as a problem for Jewish people as opposed to a stain on society.” 

The suddenness of the shift has been striking, Hauer said. “It was like we were a source of darkness,” he explained. “All those who we stood shoulder-to-shoulder with to fight for their needs and to fight for their rights suddenly don’t recognize us, so that’s jarring.”

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The Anti-Defamation League tallied over 10,000 antisemitic incidents between Oct. 7, 2023 and Oct. 6, 2024, up from 3,325 during the prior year and representing the highest annual total the group has counted. They include over 8,000 incidents of harassment, 150 physical assaults and 1,840 acts of vandalism. Combined, more than half of these incidents took place at anti-Israel rallies (over 3,000) or at Jewish institutions (over 2,000).

Some politicians and the United Nations (U.N.) have stoked domestic anti-Israel hate. In January, the Chicago City Council passed a resolution calling for a cease-fire in Gaza without also calling for the disarmament of Hamas, drawing wide condemnation from Jewish community leaders. 

Despite multiple U.S. officials and the State Department condemning her spread of antisemitism, U.N. special rapporteur on the occupied Palestinian territories Francesca Albanese visited numerous U.S. campuses in October while presenting her latest report before the U.N. General Assembly. During a stop at Barnard College, Albanese “described Israel’s war in Gaza as a ‘genocide,’ justified the October 7 attack, and questioned Israel’s right to exist,” the Times of Israel reported.

The victim, described by the Jewish United Fund as a “Jewish community member,” was shot in the shoulder in Chicago in an antisemitic hate crime. (Fox 32 Chicago)

Hatred that had been percolating on university campuses took new shape when anti-Israel encampments sprung up at learning institutions countrywide during the spring. During some encampment protests, Jewish students were excluded from their own campus spaces. 

Terror flags have been flown on U.S. streets and campuses during anti-Israel protests. School administrators and business leaders who have angered anti-Israel protesters have had their homes and institutions tagged with the inverted red triangle that Hamas uses to denote military targets. In July, protesters replaced the American flag with the Palestinian flag in Washington, D.C., and wrote “Hamas is coming” on a statue of Christopher Columbus. 

In September, an ISIS-inspired attack on the Jewish community was thwarted by Canadian and U.S. authorities. On Oct. 26, a Mauritanian national who entered the country illegally in March 2023 shot a Jewish worshipper in Chicago before engaging in a shootout with responding police and paramedics. Chicago leaders waited five days before confirming the religious identity of the suspect’s target and noting that the shooter had intentionally targeted the Jewish community. 

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Jewish students at El Camino Real Charter High School walkout to protest antisemitic incidents at the Woodland Hills, California, school on Tuesday, Feb. 27, 2024 in Los Angeles. (Photo by Sarah Reingewirtz/MediaNews Group/Los Angeles Daily News via Getty Images)

Brooke Goldstein, a human rights attorney and founder of The Lawfare Project, addressed the impetus for the atmosphere of intolerance, telling Fox News Digital that “President Biden and the largely Democratic leaders of large cities around the country have failed to act to curtail Jew-hatred because it is politically inconvenient for them to enforce the civil rights of Jewish Americans and ensure public safety.” 

She said that “for years, the progressive left has ignored Jew-hatred coming from within their own ranks, choosing to ignore the reality that the Jewish people are a minority people still very much needing their legal protections upheld in the face of Marxist-oriented and Islamist-inspired attacks on their identity, indigenous right to their ancestral homeland, and their ability to enjoy equal protection under the law. Their politicians downplay Jewish identity to avoid being called out for their hypocrisy given their support for social justice for all people – other than Jews – and even to avoid prosecuting attacks against Jews as hate crimes, especially when the attackers are members of other minority communities.”

An anti-Israel sign with the phrase “from the river to the sea Palestine will be free” at a protest near Tulane University in New Orleans. The phrase has been criticized as calling for the destruction of Israel. (Credit: Ryan Zamos)

Hatred Around the World

Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean and global social action director for the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told Fox News Digital that he feels the world is “at a tipping point” where antisemitic intolerance is concerned. With popular social media influencers “normalizing” hatred of Israel, national leaders around the world escalating anti-Israel rhetoric and extremists not “feeling they’re going to be held accountable” when they target the Jewish community, Rabbi Cooper explained that it is “a perfect storm.” 

In Europe, incidents of antisemitic hate have risen as much as the 800% seen in Sweden between 2022 and 2023. Jews across Europe have reported that they no longer wear items that might identify their religion and have sometimes changed their names to avoid being targeted. In France, there has been a 430% increase in Jews applying to immigrate to Israel from 2022 to 2023.

Though Ireland has a small Jewish population, it has seen an uptick in antisemitic hatred and Jewish self-censorship. In December, Israel announced that it would close its embassy in the country, citing Irish leaders’ “deligitimization and demonization of the Jewish state.” 

The United Kingdom has also seen a large increase in antisemitic hate, with the Community Security Trust reporting a record 1,978 antisemitic incidents in the first half of 2024. This included a 246% increase in “damage and desecration to Jewish property” between the first six months of 2023 and the first six months of 2024. The Israeli minister for Diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism said in March that due to its pro-Hamas atmosphere, London had become the world’s “most antisemitic city.” 

In late November, a bus carrying Jewish school children was attacked with rocks after protesters harassed those aboard. Days earlier, a man threw bottles at a group of Jewish teens, hitting and hospitalizing one of his targets.

Headlines about hate for the Jewish community overseas have been gruesome. In June, a 12-year-old Jewish girl in France was raped by two teens on account of her religion. In November, the body of Chabad Rabbi Zvi Kogan was found dead in the United Arab Emirates after he disappeared from his Abu Dhabi home. 

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At York University in Canada, antisemitic graffiti was scrawled in a classroom on Oct. 26, 2023. (Courtesy of Jewish Learning Initiative on Campus)

More than nine synagogues worldwide have been the targets of arson since Oct. 7, according to a social media post from Hen Mazzig, a senior fellow at the Tel Aviv Institute. The latest attack occurred on Dec. 18 in Montreal at a synagogue which was also targeted in November 2023, the New York Post reported. Just two days later, shots were fired overnight at a Jewish elementary school in Toronto. It was the third shooting at the school since May, according to the Times of Israel.

Another recent arson attack took place at a synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, on Dec. 6. The Simon Wiesenthal Center responded to the incident by issuing a travel advisory for Australia, explaining that the country’s leaders had failed to stand up against “persistent demonization, harassment, and violence against Jews and Jewish institutions.”

A member of the Jewish community recovers an item from the Adass Israel Synagogue on Dec. 6, 2024 in Melbourne, Australia. An arson attack on the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne forced congregants to flee as flames engulfed the building early on Friday morning. (Asanka Ratnayake/Getty Images)

Just a month earlier, the Simon Wiesenthal Center issued a similar advisory for the Netherlands after a soccer match led to a “Jew Hunt,” in which Jewish fans were tracked down and assaulted in the city. The incident sparked another attempted “Jew Hunt” in Antwerp and attacks on a Berlin youth soccer team.

When Cooper’s group placed the travel advisory on the Netherlands, he told Fox News Digital that “theoretically, you could slap a travel advisory on almost every place in Western Europe.”

Anti-Israel protesters hold a banner and chant at a protest in London on Dec. 9, 2023. (Photo by Andy Soloman/UCG/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)

In the U.S., with anti-Jewish intolerance infiltrating elite universities, workplaces, the medical community, and the entertainment industry, Rabbi Cooper summarized that “the challenges ahead are going to be quite daunting.” He also noted that he has hope on account of the resiliency of the Jewish community and the safety provided by American democracy. 

Cooper said that many appointees from President Trump’s incoming administration, including incoming U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Rep. Elise Stefanik, are “defenders of our community.” When they begin implementing new policies, he said that he believes that “a lot of good things can happen very, very quickly.” 

Norway has the highest number of electric cars in Europe relative to its total passenger vehicles.

According to Eurostat data, Oslo leads the continent with a density of 26.49%, followed by the western Norwegian county of Vestland at 22.08%, and neighbouring Trøndelag at 18.86%.

In the EU, the top spots are held by the Dutch provinces of Flevoland (12.77%), Utrecht (6.64%) and Sweden’s Stockholm (6.6%).

It’s worth noting, however, that some Norwegian regions have very small populations. For instance, Jan Mayen and Svalbard has only around 2,600 residents.

Which areas have the lowest number of electric cars?

In contrast, Turkey has the highest number of areas with almost no electric car registrations, along with some Spanish overseas territories and Greek islands. This is primarily due to the insufficient number of EV charging stations in certain regions.

In mainland Europe, the lowest numbers are mainly in Serbia and Greece.

Who owns the most cars overall in Europe?

EU citizens own an average of 0.56 passenger cars per inhabitant, says Eurostat.

The top three regions with the highest rates are all in the mountainous northern part of Italy: The Aosta Valley, with nearly two and a half cars per resident (2,399/1,000), the Trento Province (1,431/1,000) and the Bolzano Province (935/1000).

Favourable taxation policies influence the record rate of car ownership in Aosta Valley.

At the other end of the scale is the French overseas region of Mayotte, with 83 passenger cars per 1,000 inhabitants, followed by Greece’s Peloponnisos (203/1,000) and another French overseas department, Guyane (217/1,000).

Several European capitals also rank among the areas with the lowest rates of cars per thousand inhabitants, including Berlin (338), Vienna (375), Stockholm (400), Brussels (402), and the Amsterdam region of North Holland (434).

Video editor • Mert Can Yilmaz

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