Jewish students in Europe feel alone and afraid following a “surge” in antisemitism across the continent, according to an Aug. 26 report from B’nai B’rith International, the European Union of Jewish Students and the nonprofit Democ.
“This report makes clear that Europe’s universities are failing their Jewish students. Just as we have seen on campuses across the United States, antisemitism here is too often excused as ‘activism,’ but in reality, it is a threat to safety, inclusion and the very integrity of higher education,” stated Robert Spitzer and Daniel S. Mariaschin, international president and CEO, respectively, of B’nai B’rith.
The report examines campuses in Austria, Belgium, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and the United Kingdom.
“The atmosphere is pervasive,” Alina Bricman, director of European Union affairs at B’nai B’rith, told JNS. “It affected all countries listed in the report heavily and has permeated across Europe.”
Bricman told JNS that two incidents in France were among the ones that shocked her the most.
In January 2024, six people attacked three Jewish University of Strasbourg students, who were hanging posters calling for the release of hostages and saying “no to antisemitism.” The assailants knocked the Jewish students to the ground and called them “Zionist fascists.”
In November 2023, someone wrote “dirty Jewess die” in French and drew a swastika on a Jewish student’s property at a school in Toulouse.
According to the report, “clear and repeated patterns of antisemitic or otherwise harmful behaviors emerge” from the countries studied, including threats and physical violence against Jews, calls for violence “as appropriate protest action” and support for Hamas and other terror groups, “widespread” distortion and instrumentalization of the Holocaust and calls for Israel to be destroyed.
Another part of the pattern is “widespread vandalism following protests, sit-ins and encampments as well as targeted vandalism of Jewish premises,” B’nai B’rith stated.
According to the report, Samidoun and other groups with terror ties often drive antisemitic protests on campus, and schools have been hesitant to quash protests and have acted at times “with tacit approval or by invoking freedom of expression.” On other occasions, “antisemitic actors were not sanctioned,” it stated.
The presence of speakers, who are part of pro-terror groups, at schools “proves the extent to which the situation on campus has escaped any oversight by university administrations,” Bricman told JNS. “Explicit cooperation with such groups normalizes extreme views, support for Hamas, support for the annihilation of Israel and the marginalization of Jewish students.”
A “deep-seated academic bias,” which has taken over many departments at colleges and universities, is equally concerning to Bricman. She told JNS that the schools have “become void of critical thinking and space for debate,” and their faculty preaches “one-sided narratives” from “positions of power.”
A senior University of Applied Arts Vienna professor, in Austria, who is cited in the report, said that “anyone who recognizes Israel’s right to exist recognizes imperialism, colonialism and racism.”
Jewish students in the countries studied in the new research have reported “feelings of fear, isolation and disenfranchisement within academic spaces that should otherwise serve as environments of mutual respect and open discussion.”
They also report hiding their Jewish identities and avoiding campus, where they fear violence. Jewish students are “withdrawing more and more and are less a part of public university life,” the report states.
The report authors recommend that universities use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition to define Jew-hatred and set up bodies to address antisemitism on campus and increase security.
“European Jewish students have at times opted to hide their identity or, in some cases, abandon in-person learning altogether due to the environment of hatred that has surrounded them,” wrote Katharina von Schnurbein, European Commission coordinator on combating antisemitism and fostering Jewish life, in a foreword to the report.
“Decisive action, and where necessary prosecution, is needed to prevent further poisoning of the public space,” she stated. “The present report is an important documentation of the lived realities on university campuses that should inform immediate action by university administrators and policymakers alike.”
