Europe’s Darkest Hours Return:
Antisemitism Surges Across Europe, Reaching ‘Historic’ Levels After 2023
From Amsterdam to London, Paris to Rome — Jewish communities are facing a wave of violence, harassment, and institutional failure that demands urgent, unequivocal action from every European government
Europe is failing its Jewish citizens. The numbers are stark, the incidents are documented, and the pattern is unmistakable: since October 7, 2023, antisemitism across the continent has reached levels that EU officials themselves describe as reminiscent of Europe’s “darkest hours.” As a Muslim human rights advocate who has spent years working on minority rights and interfaith solidarity, I say this not as an outside observer — but as someone who believes, with full conviction, that the protection of Jewish communities is inseparable from the protection of all minorities. This crisis demands our voices, urgently and without equivocation.
The explosion of antisemitic acts since October 2023 has crossed every metric that observers once used to define crisis thresholds. Stars of David have been marked on homes in France. Football fans were chased through Amsterdam’s streets in what authorities called a pogrom. Danish institutions report the highest incident levels since the Second World War. Synagogues in London have been firebombed, with investigators examining possible Iranian state involvement. And in classrooms across the European Union, teachers report a generation of students who deny the Holocaust, mock Jewish identity, and physically threaten Jewish peers — while educators feel too afraid to speak up.
“After October 7, the curtain of shame to be antisemitic has fallen — and what was under the skin surfaced. That is what we are living with now.”
— Italian Jewish community leader, Jerusalem Post🗺️ Country by Country: The Scale of the Crisis
No single European country has been spared. The surge is continent-wide, though it takes different forms in different national contexts — reflecting both the specific history of each country’s Jewish community and the particular political climate that has allowed hatred to resurface.
🔥 London: Synagogue Attacks & the Iran Connection
The most operationally significant dimension of Europe’s antisemitism crisis in 2026 is what is unfolding in London — where a pattern of coordinated arson attacks on Jewish sites has led British authorities to investigate possible foreign state involvement, with Iran named as a focus of inquiry.
British police confirmed the detention of two teenagers following an arson attack on the Kenton United Synagogue on Shaftesbury Avenue in northwest London. A bottle containing an accelerant was thrown through a window shortly after midnight, causing minor structural damage. No injuries were reported.
Deputy Commissioner Matt Jukes confirmed that 15 arrests have now been made in connection with six incidents targeting Jewish-linked sites across the capital. These include a March 23 arson attack in Golders Green that destroyed four ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity; petrol-filled bottles thrown at a synagogue in Finchley; an attempted attack on a building in Hendon previously used by a Jewish charity; and suspicious items found near the Israeli embassy in Kensington Gardens.
Authorities are also examining claims by a group calling itself Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia (“Islamic Movement of the Companions of the Right”), which stated it carried out several attacks — though investigators stress the group’s role remains unverified. Officials say the pattern raises serious concerns about coordinated activity involving foreign actors. Investigators are assessing whether tactics linked to Tehran — including the use of criminal intermediaries — could be a factor, with individuals reportedly recruited to carry out attacks for payment.
March 23, 2026 — Golders Green: Arson attack destroys four ambulances belonging to a Jewish charity. One of the most damaging single acts in the series.
Finchley Synagogue: Petrol-filled bottles thrown at the building. Building sustained damage; no casualties reported.
Hendon: Attempted attack on a building previously used by a Jewish charity.
Kensington Gardens: Suspicious items discovered near the Israeli embassy.
Kenton United Synagogue: Accelerant-filled bottle thrown through window after midnight. Two arrested — a 17-year-old and a 19-year-old.
“A concerted campaign against Londoners, against Britons, and against British Jewish communities in particular — part of a modern hybrid war fought by proxies.”
“This sustained attack on our community’s ability to worship and live in safety is an attack on the values that bind us all together.”
For those of us working on the intersection of Iranian state terrorism, proxy violence, and minority rights, the London pattern is deeply familiar. As FFN has reported extensively, Iran’s use of criminal intermediaries — offering cash payments to recruits with no ideological affiliation — is a documented tactic applied across Europe and beyond. The IRGC’s willingness to target Jewish sites on European soil is not a surprise. It is a logical extension of the same regime that recruits 12-year-olds into its internal security apparatus and funds proxy militias from Lebanon to Yemen. The response must be commensurate: designation of the IRGC’s European networks, maximum pressure on recruitment channels, and coordinated intelligence-sharing across EU member states.
🏫 The Classroom Crisis: Antisemitism in EU Schools
Perhaps the most disturbing dimension of this crisis is the one that will shape Europe’s future: what is happening in its classrooms. A UNESCO survey of EU teachers in 2026 has produced findings that should alarm every education minister, school director, and parent on the continent.
“When antisemitism becomes part of everyday discourse, it loses its capacity to shock. It becomes one opinion among many — rather than a red line.”
— Jerusalem Post analysis of Italy’s Jewish community, 2026🇮🇹 Italy: The New Face of an Old Hate
The Jerusalem Post’s investigation into Italy’s Jewish community offers a sobering case study in what “structural” antisemitism looks like — and why it cannot be addressed by security measures alone.
On October 9, 1982, Palestinian terrorists attacked Rome’s Great Synagogue as worshipers left after Sukkot. A two-year-old child, Stefano Gaj Taché, was murdered; 37 others were wounded — the deadliest attack on Rome’s Jewish community since World War II. More than four decades later, justice remains elusive. Only recently did Rome’s Public Prosecutor’s Office conclude its investigation, identifying five suspects who have never faced an Italian court. Newly released documents suggest Italian authorities may have had prior intelligence warning of the attack.
For Italy’s Jewish community, that failure now feels less like history and more like warning. A senior community leader described the shift: “We feel hatred within the society that is getting stronger and structural. It’s something we shall have to live with. It’s not episodic, happening every now and then.” The same leader acknowledged that Italian institutions have remained close — the police are attentive, the national antisemitism coordinator has renewed the national strategy — but raised a question that haunts Europe more broadly: “We wonder what will happen when politicians start to chase certain votes.”
Italy remains, relatively, one of the safer environments for Jewish life in Europe. Its institutions are engaged. Yet beneath that framework, the social climate is shifting. The question increasingly being asked is not only whether Jews are safe — but whether they are fully accepted. Safety can be provided by guards and legislation. Acceptance depends on something deeper: the willingness of society to see Jews as an integral part of its fabric, rather than as symbols of a distant conflict.
🏛️ What Institutions Are — and Must — Do
European institutions have begun to respond — but the scale of the response has not yet matched the scale of the crisis. The following measures are underway; far more is needed.
These measures are necessary. They are not sufficient. Protecting a synagogue with soldiers is an admission of institutional failure — of a social environment in which the state can no longer guarantee the safety of its Jewish citizens through ordinary policing. The deeper work — in classrooms, in online spaces, in political discourse, and in the normative framework of what is acceptable to say and do in European societies — has barely begun.
✍️ A Muslim Advocate’s Unequivocal Message
I have said this before, and I will say it again — because repetition, in the face of rising hatred, is not redundancy; it is insistence: the protection of Europe’s Jewish communities is the responsibility of every person who believes in minority rights, human dignity, and the promise of a pluralistic society. This is not a Jewish issue. It is a European issue. It is a human rights issue.
As a Muslim woman and a human rights advocate, I reject — fully and without reservation — every manifestation of antisemitism, whether it comes from the far right, from extremist actors exploiting the Israel-Gaza conflict as a pretext, or from within any community, including my own. The attack on a synagogue is an attack on all of us. The harassment of a Jewish student is a failure of the social contract that protects every minority, including Muslims.
“A Europe that allows antisemitism to flourish will not, in the end, protect any minority. The solidarity between Jewish and Muslim communities is not tactical — it is grounded in shared vulnerability and shared values.”
— Manel Msalmi, FFNThe interfaith solidarity I have championed — through the Jewish & Muslim Friendship Group, through years of dialogue work, through the articles on this platform — is not a platitude. It is a practical, political, and moral necessity in a continent where the far right targets both communities, and where foreign state actors like Iran exploit divisions to destabilize democratic societies.
Europe must choose: will it be a continent where Jewish children can wear a kippah to school without fear? Where a teacher can take a class to Auschwitz without dreading the reaction? Where a synagogue does not need soldiers on its doorstep? The answer to those questions is a measure of whether European values remain alive — or have become, as the community leader in Italy fears, merely a framework within which structural hatred quietly takes root.
The time for measured language has passed. The time for unequivocal action — in education, in law enforcement, in foreign policy toward the Iranian state, and in the moral culture of European public life — is now.
Manel Msalmi is the Chief Executive of Faith & Freedom News and Founder & President of the European Association for the Defense of Minorities — a human rights advocate and interfaith peace activist specializing in the rights of religious and ethnic minorities across the MENA region and Europe.
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