With antisemitism rising as the Israel-Hamas war rages, Europe's Jews worry

In Europe, the Oct. 7 Hamas attack on Israel and Israel's response has caused a surge in antisemitism, with 1,247 incidents reported in France alone since then. Jews are fearful, with some changing their behavior and even considering moving to Israel. Governments and organizations are taking action, but some still debate what should be labeled antisemitic. Despite the chaos, there is hope as people on both sides of the conflict have found ways to come together and show courage.

As he sits in Geneva, Michel Dreifuss does not feel all that far away from the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7 and Israel's subsequent bombardment of Gaza. The ripples are rolling through Europe and upending assumptions both global and intimate — including those about his personal safety as a Jew.

“Yesterday I bought a tear-gas spray canister at a military-equipment surplus store,” the 64-year-old retired tech sector worker said recently at a rally to mark a month since the Hamas killings. The choice, he says, is a “precaution," driven by a surge of antisemitism in Europe.

Last month's slayings of about 1,200 people in Israel by armed Palestinian militants represented the biggest killing of Jews since the Holocaust. The fallout from it, and from Israel’s intense military response that health officials in Hamas-controlled Gaza say has killed at least 13,300 Palestinians, has extended to Europe. In doing so, it has shaken a continent all too familiar with deadly anti-Jewish hatred for centuries.

Also read: The geopolitical fallout of the Israel-Hamas war 

The past century is of particular note, of course. Concern about rising antisemitism in Europe is fuelled in part by what happened to Jews before and during World War II, and that makes it particularly fearsome for those who may be only one or two generations removed from people who were the victims of riots against Jews and Nazi brutality.

What most chills many Jews interviewed is what they see as the lack of empathy for the Israelis killed during the early morning massacre and for the relatives of the hostages — about 30 of whom are children — suspended in an agonizing limbo.

“What really upsets me," said Holocaust survivor Herbert Traube said at a Paris event commemorating the 85th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 1938 government-backed pogroms against Jews in Germany and Austria, “is to see that there isn’t a massive popular reaction against this."