TAU Report: Antisemitic Attacks Killed 20 Jews in 2025, Highest Toll in Three Decades

A Tel Aviv University report released Monday found that 20 Jews were killed in antisemitic attacks worldwide in 2025, marking the highest annual death toll in more than 30 years.

The annual “Antisemitism Worldwide Report for 2025,” published ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day by the university’s Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry and the Irwin Cotler Institute, said severe antisemitic violence surged across Western countries even as overall incident totals in some areas showed limited declines. Researchers warned that levels of antisemitism remain far above those recorded before Oct. 7.

The 20 deaths were recorded in four attacks across three continents: a mass-casualty assault during Chanukkah celebrations at Bondi Beach in Sydney; the killing of two Israeli Embassy staff members outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C.; a fatal firebombing attack on a pro-Israel march in Boulder, Colorado; and a deadly assault at a synagogue in Manchester on Yom Kippur.

“The data raise concern that a high level of antisemitic incidents is becoming a normalized reality,” said Professor Uriya Shavit, the report’s editor-in-chief. “The peak in the number of incidents was recorded in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7, 2023, attack, after which we began to see a downward trend—but unfortunately, that trend did not continue in 2025.” He added: “The steep increase in the number of cases of severe violence is not surprising. The rule that applies to all types of crime applies here as well: when law-enforcement authorities are indifferent to small crimes, the result is big crimes.”

The report documented record or near-record levels of antisemitic incidents in several countries. Australia recorded 1,750 incidents in 2025, its highest total to date, while Canada reported 6,800 cases, more than triple its figures from 2022. In Britain, incidents rose to 3,700, with a sharp increase in the final months of the year. In New York City, overall cases declined slightly but rose again toward the end of 2025. In France, total incidents decreased, but physical assaults increased.

Irwin Cotler, a former Canadian justice minister and co-founder of the institute, said the findings reflect a broader and historically significant trend. “We are witnessing not only an unprecedented surge in the number of antisemitic incidents since they began being documented in the 1970s, but also an unprecedented surge in the number of hate crimes against Jews,” he said.

A companion study included in the report examined perpetrators of antisemitic attacks in the United States, France, Canada and Britain between 2020 and 2025. It found that many attackers operated as individuals rather than as part of structured organizations, often emerging from white supremacist or anti-Zionist Muslim milieus.

“There is currently in the United States a vast and dangerous drift against Israel, and antisemitism is flourishing as it has not since World War II,” said researcher Carl Yonker.

The report concludes that while the immediate spike in antisemitic incidents following the Oct. 7 attack initially subsided, the trend did not continue in 2025, with severe violence rising and incident levels remaining elevated worldwide.