Last year saw a huge increase in anti-Semitic incidents in the Czech Republic, culminating in the last quarter of 2023, when the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas carried out a terrorist attack in Israel on Oct. 7.
In its annual report, the Federation of Jewish Communities revealed that 4,328 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in the Czech Republic last year, a 90 percent increase from 2,277 the previous year. According to the report, 1,802 incidents — or almost 42 percent of all incidents — occurred in the last three months of the year.
“Oct. 7 was immediately followed by a global explosion of anti-Semitism, which hit the Czech Republic hard,” the report said, pointing to a flare-up of religious conflict across Europe since the October terrorist attack on Israel.
The Hamas attack on Israel killed more than 1,000 people, most of them civilians. Israel responded by launching a retaliatory offensive, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran joining the fighting. Much of the Jew-hatred has been spread online, with thousands of messages calling for the extermination of Jews.
Elsewhere in Europe, the situation is even worse. The number of anti-Semitic incidents in Germany reached a record high last year. The Association of Research and Information Centers on Anti-Semitism (RIAS) recently presented its annual report for 2023, pointing out the unprecedented increase.
In Germany, more than half of all anti-Jewish incidents last year occurred after Oct. 7. “In this context, anti-Semitism was often expressed in particularly violent ways,” the RIAS report said. Felix Klein, the federal government’s commissioner for combating anti-Semitism, described the figures as disastrous and stressed that the Hamas attack had served as a catalyst for a surge in anti-Semitic acts.
“Jewish life in Germany is under greater threat than at any time since the founding of the Federal Republic of Germany,” said Klein, underlining the gravity of the situation highlighted in the RIAS report.
Almost half of all documented incidents, 46 percent, took place on the streets, in public buildings, in parks, and on public transport. In the previous year, the figure was 39 percent. The number of anti-Semitic incidents in educational institutions was also strikingly high.
