Abstract: Since the coordinated terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas against Israel on 7 October 2023 and the subsequent war in Gaza, European authorities have widely assessed that the terrorist threat facing Jewish communities worldwide has increased significantly. Following the war in Iran which started on 28 February 2026, Europe has again witnessed a wave of antisemitic attacks. Across the ideological spectrum, antisemitic beliefs have been a key driver behind several fatal terrorist attacks. These include the jihadist attack in December 2025 at Bondi Beach in Australia, when two perpetrators opened fire at a Hanukkah celebration, killing 15 and injuring 40, as well as the October 2025 attack in Manchester, United Kingdom, which left two people dead after a perpetrator drove a car into a crowd outside a synagogue and subsequently went on to stab some of the survivors.
Antisemitism also frequently serves as a driver of hate crimes. Although the number of antisemitic incidents was already high prior to October 2023, it surged in the direct aftermath and has remained persistently elevated ever since. Recently, the Dutch National Coordinator for Combating Antisemitism (NCAB) announced that, with 867 registered antisemitic crimes in 2025, the figure was only marginally below the all-time highs recorded in both 2023 and 2024, which each recorded approximately 880 incidents. Similarly, after a record high of 6,236 antisemitic crimes in 2024, the German Federal Criminal Police Office (BKA) registered 5,729 antisemitic crimes in 2025. However, as the figure remains preliminary and reporting delays are common, the final total for 2025 is likely to rise further.
Against this backdrop, the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism (ICCT), together with the Security and Crisis Centre (SACC) of the European Jewish Congress, conducted a one-year monitoring exercise between 1 January and 31 December 2025 of kinetic manifestations of antisemitism across all European Union member states, as well as the UK and Switzerland. Unlike other datasets that highlight the extensive scale of antisemitism online, this monitoring focuses exclusively on offline incidents of antisemitism. This analysis presents initial insights derived from this monitoring. Although our findings show that actual incidents of antisemitic terrorism remain comparatively rare, the above-mentioned examples demonstrate that a persistent terrorist threat nevertheless exists. Accordingly, considering that antisemitism often serves as a bridging narrative across extremist ideologies, the second part of this analysis presents a brief assessment of the main terrorist and violent extremist threats facing Jewish communities in Europe.
