Published: 17 October 2023
Last updated: 5 March 2024
Israeli stabbed in China; Threats of violence surge online; France bans pro-Palestinian rallies.
Diaspora communities have experienced a surge in antisemitic violence in the wake of the Hamas attack on Israeli civilians, including the stabbing of an Israeli in China, a tripling of antisemitic attacks in Britain and an unprecedent 1200% rise in online calls for violence.
- A man associated with the Israeli embassy was stabbed in Beijing on Friday, the same day that a Hamas leader called for a day of global action. Beijing’s Chaoyang police department said the victim was a 50-year-old male family member of an Israeli embassy worker and the attack did not occur on embassy grounds. The assailant, a 53-year-old man who worked in a small commodities business in Beijing but was not from China, was arrested.
- Vandals painted Stars of David on Jewish homes in Berlin, prompting the Israeli embassy to describe the situation as “reminiscent of the Third Reich”.
- An unprecedented 1200% escalation in online calls for violence against Israel, Zionists, and Jews was recorded between October 7-10 by the Antisemitism Cyber Monitoring System (ACMS).
- In the UK, the Community Security Trust (CST) reported that the number of antisemitic incidents in the four days from October 7 had increased by 324% compared with the same period last year. Three Jewish schools in London closed temporarily because of safety concerns.
- France’s Interior Minister instituted a ban on all pro-Palestinian demonstrations in response to the over 100 local antisemitic incidents recorded in the four days since Hamas’s attacks on Israel.
- US universities experienced massive protests. At Columbia, which has a large Jewish population, there were more police on campus than at any time since the Vietnam War. The Columbia rallies were part of a “day of resistance” called by National Students for Justice in Palestine, which praised the Hamas attack as “a historic win for the Palestinian resistance”. Similar statements by pro-Palestinian groups in other universities meant the protests were regarded by students sympathetic to Israel as rejoicing in the killing.
A letter calling “for moral accountability and official punishment for SJP and its chapters for their campaign to glorify the Hamas attacks” received more than 150 signatures from organisations ranging from major national groups such as the Anti-Defamation League and the American Jewish Committee to local campus Hillel and Chabad houses and Jewish fraternities and sororities.
