OPINION:
“Decline,” the late writer Charles Krauthammer famously observed, “is a choice.” Many in Europe are making it. There are worrying signs that it will cross the Atlantic and establish a presence here.
Antisemitism has been mainstreamed in much of Europe, with disastrous and deadly results. In 2024, Germany’s Federal Research and Information Point for Antisemitism recorded a shocking 77% increase in documented antisemitic incidents from the previous year. In Britain, the Community Security Trust reported the second-highest total ever recorded. According to the trust, there was an astonishing 465% rise in incidents in higher education in just the first half of 2024.
In France, Belgium and elsewhere, Jewish schools and synagogues often exist only under armed guard. This is tragic but isn’t surprising. Anti-Jewish violence has skyrocketed throughout much of the Western world. It is worth asking why.
Last month, a Syrian immigrant named Jihad Al-Shamie attacked a synagogue in Manchester, England, on Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the Jewish year. British Prime Minister Keir Starmer called the attack “absolutely shocking,” though it was anything but. As Stephen Pollard of the Jewish Chronicle, a British newspaper, observed: “We know everything about the climate that made this atrocity possible: years of antisemitism on Britain’s streets, tolerated until it turned deadly today.”
Jewish communal life is increasingly segregated and forced underground. Eight decades after the Holocaust, Europe is seemingly doing its utmost to rid itself of its Jews. It’s working: Jews are fleeing Europe en masse, taking their lives, belongings, culture and talents with them.
Antisemitism has been allowed to take root and fester on the continent. Too often, institutions meant to advance and safeguard civilization have enabled its rise. Academia, the press and elites, among others, have either been silent or too often complicit. Recent events have provided them with an excuse to unleash dark forces.
On Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas and other Iranian-backed proxies invaded Israel, perpetrating the largest massacre of Jewish civilians since the Holocaust. The attack prompted Israel to respond militarily, but it also provided an excuse for huge swaths of the West to indulge in antisemitism of their own.
Jews have been physically attacked across Europe and in the United States. The Community Security Trust’s 2025 report cited the “enduring levels of anti-Jewish hate” that were unleashed by the Oct. 7 assault. The press, pundits and irresponsible politicians have ginned up the hate by asserting that Israel is responsible for “genocide” and a “famine.” These aren’t just words; they’re a pretext.
Such claims, parroted by CNN, The Washington Post and others, don’t pass scrutiny. Nearly all rely on the “Gaza Health Ministry,” a Hamas-controlled entity. The famine libel, as popular as it has been, was “based on fabricated data that misrepresented the raw, unweighted malnutrition statistics,” according to one study by Mark Zlochin, a former artificial intelligence researcher who has spent months poring over data from the Gaza Strip.
Mr. Zlochin told Jewish News Service reporter Mike Wagenheim that the famine libel “was always a hoax,” perpetrated by bad faith actors and regurgitated by a careless Fourth Estate. Now Jews and others will be living with the consequences.
Attacking Jews is now seen as permissible. Ditto for discrimination.
Britain recently banned Maccabi Tel Aviv fans from attending a sports game, fearing for their safety. Britain, the focal point of the free world eight decades ago during an epic fight against totalitarianism, will no longer protect its own Jews. Winston Churchill would weep. Here, too, many authorities have been “feeding the alligator, hoping it eats them last,” as Churchill said of appeasement.
In September, for example, Britain announced a temporary ban on Israeli military personnel attending courses at the Royal College of Defense Studies. Similarly, Germany announced a temporary arms embargo against Israel. Worse still, the leaders of Spain and Ireland have expressed support for the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement, which singles out Israel for opprobrium, and for military action against Israel at the very moment it is waging a war against genocidal terrorists seeking the destruction of Jews and the West itself.
Suffice to say: It is insanity for a Europe — short on defense funds, with stagnant birth rates and facing a menacing Russia — to be castigating a small nation that has successfully fought a multifront war against numerically superior opponents. It could more accurately be described as suicidal, but that is precisely what Europe is doing.
Some, no doubt, are hoping to sate new and growing antisemitic constituencies. In the end, they, too, will be swallowed whole by a virus that spreads quickly, is all-encompassing and is nearly always fatal. As historian Paul Johnson observed, antisemitism is an “intellectual disease,” and wherever it takes “hold, social and political decline almost inevitably” follow. Some societies are well on their way. The abyss beckons.
The fate of the people of the book is about more than Jews themselves. On that much, history is clear, even if much of Europe seems quick to forget. Americans should heed the lesson.
• The writer is a senior research analyst for the 65,000-member, Boston-based Committee for Accuracy in Middle East Reporting and Analysis.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.