It is important to thank those who stand with the Jewish people, especially when they suffer. The oldest hatred is becoming normal again. The results of several opinion polls were released recently, and the news is not good for Jews (“Antisemitism: The Modern Forces Fueling an Ancient Scourge,” David Swindle, RealClearInvestigations, April 29, 2025).
In one survey of people in 103 countries (ADL Global 100), 46 percent of the respondents possessed antisemitic attitudes; 10 years ago it was 24 percent. In Gaza, it is 97 percent of the population today, in Russia 62 percent, in China 58 percent, in the USA 24 percent. Why so high in China? Surely only a tiny percent of Chinese have even met a Jew.
Other studies revealed that antisemitic incidents have skyrocketed since 2014, long before the Gaza War of October 2023. In the US, attacks rose 893 percent since 2014, but in just the last three years, attacks rose 562 percent in Canada, 450 percent in the United Kingdom and 350 percent in France.
Antisemitism is rising as memory of the Holocaust–the shock and the shame–fades and the number of survivors dwindles. Half of Americans can’t name a concentration camp, and 21 percent of Austrians, and 18 percent of Germans, believe fewer than two million Jews died in the Holocaust.
In France 20 percent of adults haven’t heard of the Holocaust. Among 18- to 29-year-olds, it is 46 percent.
Among young people, the rates of antisemitism are significantly higher. They are the most likely to commit acts of violence. Among impressionable young people (age 18 to 34), 70 percent are TikTok users all day long. A study of 280,000 TikTok messages in May 2024 about the Gaza War revealed there were nine times as many pro-Palestinian messages as pro-Israel. The pro-Palestinian messages received a total of 236 million views, while the pro-Israel messages received 14 million views. It is clear which messages will have the most impact.
Jew-hatred is not new. In every generation it is reborn. The rabbis teach that Pharaoh was the first antisemite, who feared the Hebrews were becoming too numerous.
Even the historian Flavius Josephus (37-100) reported about the Egyptian historian Manetho, who had lived three hundred years earlier. Manetho wrote scornfully about a heretical priest Osarseph (Moses) of Heliopolis, who led a group of separatist lepers (the Hebrews) with their own laws, that Egypt expelled.