The Deadliest Year in Decades: How a Wave of Antisemitic Violence Reshaped the 2025 March of the Living

When thousands of marchers walked the three-kilometer path from Auschwitz to Birkenau on April 24, 2025 — the 80th anniversary of the liberation of the Nazi death camps — the procession carried a weight beyond historical remembrance. Among the more than 8,000 participants from over 40 countries were survivors of attacks that had occurred not in the 1940s, but in the previous twelve months [1].

Hannah Abesidon marched in memory of her father, Tibor Weitzen, a 78-year-old Holocaust survivor gunned down during a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney's Bondi Beach. "My father didn't make it because he was a Jew," she told the gathering. "It starts with the Jews but it doesn't end with the Jews" [2].

The 2025 March of the Living was, by design, a response to what organizers called an unprecedented crisis. Revital Yakin Krakovsky, deputy chief executive of the International March of the Living organization, framed the moment starkly: "Since 7 October, antisemitism has surged and is spreading everywhere. The scale and normalisation of this hatred echoes the dark times we have seen before" [2].

The Numbers: A 340% Surge in Two Years

The data supports the alarm. According to Tel Aviv University's annual Antisemitism Worldwide report, released to coincide with the march, 2025 was the deadliest year for antisemitic violence since the 1994 AMIA bombing in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people. Twenty people were killed across four attacks on three continents [3].

Source: Tel Aviv University / Combat Antisemitism Movement

Data as of Apr 13, 2026CSV

The trajectory has been steep. The Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) documented 6,326 antisemitic incidents globally in 2024, a 107.7% increase from 2023, which had itself seen a 58.6% rise over 2022 [4]. In the United States, the Anti-Defamation League recorded 9,354 incidents in 2024 — a record in its 46-year tracking history, averaging more than 25 targeted anti-Jewish incidents per day [5]. Assaults rose 21% to 196 incidents affecting 250 victims, while vandalism climbed 20% to 2,606 incidents [5].

Country-specific increases were severe. Canada recorded a 562% increase in incidents; the United Kingdom saw a 450% rise; France experienced over 350% growth, with 28% of French incidents involving violence; and Australia went from relatively low baseline figures to 1,727 incidents in 2024 and 1,750 in 2025 [4][3].

For the first time in the ADL audit's history, a majority of incidents — 58% — contained elements related to Israel or Zionism [5]. Campus incidents comprised 18% of all U.S. cases, with 1,694 college and university incidents representing an 84% increase from 2023 [5].

Four Attacks, Three Continents

The deadly attacks referenced at the March of the Living spanned May 2025 to December 2025 and differed in method, perpetrator profile, and ideological motivation.

Washington, D.C. — May 21, 2025: Elias Rodriguez, 30, of Chicago, opened fire outside the Capital Jewish Museum during a reception hosted by the American Jewish Committee, killing two Israeli Embassy staff members — Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim. Rodriguez reportedly told police he acted "for Gaza" and was inspired by a U.S. airman who self-immolated outside the Israeli Embassy in 2024. In February 2026, federal prosecutors expanded the indictment to 13 counts including four counts of terrorism while armed [6][7].

Boulder, Colorado — June 1, 2025: Mohamed Sabry Soliman, 45, an Egyptian national, threw Molotov cocktails at a peaceful demonstration supporting Israeli hostages held by Hamas. Karen Diamond, 82, a longtime member of the Bonai Shalom congregation, died of her injuries on June 25. Soliman faces two first-degree murder charges [8].

Manchester, England — October 2, 2025: Jihad al-Shamie, 35, a Syrian-born British citizen, drove a car into pedestrians outside the Heaton Park synagogue during a Yom Kippur service and attacked worshippers with a knife while wearing what appeared to be a suicide belt. Two worshippers — Adrian Daulby, 53, and Melvin Cravitz, 66 — were killed. Police fatally shot the attacker but also accidentally shot Daulby as congregants tried to barricade the door. Al-Shamie had pledged allegiance to Islamic State in a 999 call and was known to counterterrorism authorities [9][10].

Bondi Beach, Sydney — December 14, 2025: Sajid Akram and his son Naveed Akram opened fire on the "Chanukah by the Sea" celebration attended by approximately 1,000 people. Fifteen were killed, including two rabbis, a 10-year-old girl, and at least one Holocaust survivor. The Islamic State claimed responsibility. Sajid was killed by police; Naveed is in Goulburn Correctional Centre awaiting trial on 15 murder charges and 44 other offences [11][12].

Of the four attacks, one perpetrator (al-Shamie) was killed during the incident. Rodriguez's federal trial is pending with terrorism charges. Soliman faces state murder charges. Naveed Akram awaits trial. No convictions have been secured in any of the four cases as of April 2026.

Who Is Behind the Violence?

The ideological breakdown of antisemitic perpetrators challenges several prevailing narratives simultaneously. The CAM's 2024 data found that far-left incidents surged 324.8%, accounting for 68.4% of all tracked antisemitic activity — driven largely by radicalized social movements and anti-Israel activism that crossed into explicit anti-Jewish targeting [4]. Islamist-motivated incidents rose 44.3%, comprising 13% of the total. Far-right incidents, long considered the primary driver, dropped 54.8% and accounted for just 7.3% [4].

Source: Combat Antisemitism Movement

Data as of Apr 29, 2025CSV

However, these figures require careful interpretation. The CAM data tracks all incident types — harassment, vandalism, online abuse, campus disruptions — where far-left actors are heavily represented. When narrowed to deadly violence, the picture shifts. All four fatal attacks in 2025 were carried out by individuals with Islamist sympathies (the Manchester and Bondi Beach attackers) or by individuals radicalized through the Israeli-Palestinian conflict without clear organizational affiliation (the D.C. and Boulder attackers) [6][8][9][11].

Tel Aviv University's report noted that offenders in deadly antisemitic attacks from 2020 to 2025 were "predominantly Christian white supremacists or Muslims who apply antisemitism as a response to grievances about Middle Eastern political developments" [3]. The ADL separately found an increase in Islamist extremist terror incidents targeting the U.S. in 2024 [13].

This creates a gap between the volume data — where far-left actors dominate — and the lethality data, where Islamist-inspired and conflict-motivated attackers are disproportionately represented. Both data sets are valid; the conclusions drawn depend on which metric is prioritized.

Government Response: Funding and Legislation

Jewish communities in the United States spend more than $765 million annually on security, according to the Jewish Federations of North America — with institutions typically allocating 14% of their budgets to security costs [14]. A single security guard costs approximately $90,000 per year; a community security director costs $160,000 [14].

Federal support has grown but faces political headwinds. In August 2024, the U.S. government allocated a record $454 million to secure religious institutions through the Nonprofit Security Grant Program (NSGP), with $94 million specifically earmarked for 512 Jewish organizations in 2025 [15][16]. Nearly 45 Jewish organizations have called for the NSGP's annual budget to increase from $274.5 million to $1 billion [17].

On the legislative front, the Antisemitism Awareness Act passed the U.S. House in 2024 with bipartisan support (320-91) but stalled in the Senate. It was reintroduced in February 2025 as both H.R. 1007 and S. 558, which would give the Department of Education's Office for Civil Rights statutory authority to apply the IHRA definition of antisemitism when investigating discrimination complaints [18].

The European Union has operated under its 2021 Strategy on Combating Antisemitism and Fostering Jewish Life, backed by a €20 million funding call and the Horizon Europe research hub on contemporary antisemitism [19]. By 2025, the European Commission had convened seven working group meetings to assess implementation [19]. However, specific per-country budget comparisons with other hate-crime categories remain difficult to obtain, and several EU member states have yet to adopt their own national strategies.

In the UK, the Manchester attack prompted renewed calls for increased funding for the Community Security Trust (CST), which provides security for Jewish institutions and recorded 3,556 antisemitic incidents in 2024, rising to 3,700 in 2025 [3].

The IHRA Definition Debate

The legislative push has sharpened a long-running dispute over how antisemitism is defined — and what that definition means for political speech.

The International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition includes among its illustrative examples several items related to Israel, such as "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination" and "applying double standards" to Israel [20]. Proponents — including the ADL, the American Jewish Committee, and most mainstream Jewish organizations — argue the definition provides a necessary framework for identifying antisemitism that disguises itself as political commentary [18].

Critics counter that the definition chills protected speech. In October 2024, a federal judge in the Western District of Texas ruled that a state executive order requiring universities to apply the IHRA definition "is viewpoint discrimination" that likely violates the First Amendment [20]. Over 1,200 Jewish academics signed a letter opposing the Antisemitism Awareness Act as a "dangerous conflation of criticism of Israel with antisemitism" [20]. The ACLU urged the Senate to reject the bill, arguing it would "threaten political speech on college campuses" [21].

Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the IHRA definition in 2005, has publicly opposed its use in campus enforcement contexts, stating it was never intended as a regulatory tool [20]. Supporters of the legislation respond that the definition is non-binding and that campus administrators need clearer standards to address what they describe as an environment where Jewish students face sustained intimidation [18].

The tension is not merely theoretical. At institutions like Columbia University and Harvard, administrators have grappled with how to apply the definition. Harvard adopted it as part of a 2025 legal settlement, while Columbia issued guidance on its incorporation into campus policies [20]. Cases where pro-Palestinian student groups have been sanctioned or investigated under IHRA-informed policies continue to generate litigation and political debate.

Diaspora Communities Change Their Calculus

The violence has produced measurable behavioral changes across Jewish communities worldwide.

In the United States, the $765 million annual security bill cited by the Jewish Federations reflects a community that has effectively militarized its institutional spaces [14]. Synagogues, day schools, and community centers now routinely employ armed guards, install bulletproof barriers, and conduct active-shooter drills. A delegation of 130 law enforcement officials from dozens of countries participated in the 2025 March of the Living, pledging enhanced protection in their jurisdictions [1].

In France, aliyah — immigration to Israel — rose from approximately 1,000 people in 2023 to over 2,000 in 2024, with projections suggesting it could surpass 3,000 in 2025 [22]. Overall Western immigration to Israel reached 13,600 in 2025, a 23.6% increase from 2024, even as total aliyah to Israel declined sharply — just 11,314 people arrived during the first seven months of 2025, a 42% drop from the same period in 2024, driven by the collapse of immigration from Russia and Ukraine [22].

Source: Jewish Agency / Times of Israel

Data as of Jan 15, 2026CSV

The Western aliyah increase coincides with a striking countertrend: Israel itself has experienced net emigration since 2022, with approximately 125,200 Israeli citizens leaving the country through 2024 — including 82,700 in 2024 alone, far exceeding new arrivals [22]. The exodus has been driven by the ongoing war and domestic political turmoil. This creates a paradox: Jews in Western countries are moving to Israel in growing numbers due to safety concerns, while Israelis are leaving.

More than half of North American aliyah applicants cited solidarity with Israel following October 7 as a primary motivation, suggesting the decision is driven by identification with the Jewish state as much as by fear of antisemitism abroad [22].

Does the March Make a Difference?

The March of the Living has brought over 300,000 participants — predominantly Israeli adolescents — to the Auschwitz-Birkenau site since 1988 [23]. But the evidence on whether such commemorations reduce antisemitic attitudes is mixed.

Research published in the Journal of Religion and Health found that the march strengthened participants' connection to Jewish identity and Holocaust memory, but did not produce statistically significant long-term changes in broader identity measures [23]. A 2024 study in the journal Cogent Education examined Holocaust study tours and concluded they offer "a unique tangible opportunity to connect with the victims" that classroom instruction cannot replicate, but warned that effectiveness depends heavily on pedagogical framing [24].

Critics of what some researchers term "dark tourism" or "memory tourism" raise several concerns. Studies have linked poorly structured site visits to negative psychological outcomes, including heightened anxiety and depression, without corresponding gains in empathy or anti-prejudice attitudes [25]. The University College London Centre for Holocaust Education has cautioned that visits can create a "misconception that because they have visited in-situ sites, like the camps, they have experienced what the victims did" [26].

Policy-focused researchers argue that commemorative events, however valuable as cultural practice, are not substitutes for structural interventions: hate-crime enforcement, social media regulation, educational curricula, and community security funding. The Tel Aviv University report's editor-in-chief, Uriya Shavit, noted that "a high level of antisemitic incidents is becoming a normalized reality" — a phrase that implies the crisis has moved beyond what commemoration alone can address [3].

What Comes Next

The 2026 March of the Living, held April 14, drew thousands once again, with 50 Holocaust survivors making the walk despite Israeli airspace restrictions [2]. The survivors' ranks thin each year — the youngest are now in their late 80s — and the event's organizers have increasingly framed the march as a bridge between historical and contemporary threats.

The data offers no grounds for optimism about a near-term reversal. Incidents in multiple countries continued to rise even after the January 2025 ceasefire in Gaza [3]. The prosecution timelines for the 2025 attacks will stretch into 2027 and beyond. Legislative responses remain contested on free-speech grounds. And the fundamental question — whether Western democracies can protect their Jewish communities without restricting political expression — has no consensus answer.

What has changed is the scale of the threat and the speed at which it materialized. Between 2022 and 2025, global antisemitic incidents roughly quadrupled [3][4]. Twenty people were murdered for being Jewish or being near Jews in a single calendar year. For the marchers at Auschwitz, the connection between past and present required no metaphor.