Last year saw the skyrocketing of anti-Semitic incidents in the Czech Republic, which culminated in the last quarter of 2023, when the Palestinian terrorist organisation Hamas carried out a deadly terrorist attack in Israel on 7 October.

The Federation of the Jewish Communities in its annual report said that 4,328 anti-Semitic incidents were recorded in the Czech Republic in 2023, a ninety per cent increase from 2,277 the previous year. According to the report, 1,802 incidents – almost 42 per cent of all incidents – occurred in the last three months of the year.

„7 October was immediately followed by a global explosive wave of anti-Semitism, which also strongly hit the Czech Republic,”

the report said, pointing out that religious conflicts have flared up across Europe since the terrorist attack on Israel in October. The Hamas attacks on Israel killed more than a thousand people, most of them civilians. In response, Israel has launched a retaliatory offensive, with Lebanon’s Hezbollah and Iran since joining the fighting. Much of the Jew-hatred has spread online, with most of the messages calling for the extermination of Jews.

The situation in other European countries is even more worrying. There has also been a sharp rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Germany, and these attacks are accompanied by physical violence. Report Anti-Semitism (Rias), the national association of research and information centres on anti-Semitism documented 4,782 cases in 2023.

This represents an increase of more than 81 per cent compared to the previous year. Rias stated a marked spike was seen following Hamas’s bloody terrorist attack on Israel.

Felix Klein, the federal government’s commissioner for combating anti-Semitism, described the figures as catastrophic 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,”

Klein said, underlining the gravity of the situation highlighted in the Rias report.