Forget lamentation. After a year of disgrace, it is not Jews who should hang their heads, but the antisemites themselves.
More than 6,300 antisemitic incidents recorded in 11 months in 2025—spiking dramatically across Europe—do not describe Jewish fragility. They expose the moral collapse of societies that have normalized hatred. Antisemitism has become an algorithm: a ready-made instrument to mobilize crowds, sell headlines, build careers and legitimize violence.
We have watched it parade as humanitarianism. A “flotilla” theatrically staged by Greta Thunberg’s circle claimed to bring food while money flowed to Hamas. We have seen Amsterdam—home of Anne Frank—declare Maccabi fans unwelcome. We have watched classrooms fed historical illiteracy, recited by Francesca Albanese, to tens of thousands of students. We have followed this logic to Bondi Beach, where Jewish families celebrating Chanukah were gunned down.
Italy, tragically, is no exception. Bookstores overflow with fashionable falsehoods by Ilan Pappe and Anna Foa. Public buildings, unions and municipalities drape themselves in Palestinian flags. Television news criminalizes Israel by reflex, untethered from facts, because outrage sells. Even the death of a newborn in Gaza becomes an accusation—never a tragedy—because Israel must always be guilty.
As the late historian Robert Wistrich warned, the key is not asking endlessly why antisemitism exists, but recognizing how it mutates. This year revealed its latest mutation: total normalization. “Genocide” and “war crimes” are now casual labels for Israel, deployed without evidence, stripped of meaning.
The market for hatred is vast. Islamists brand Jews as white supremacists. Parts of the left cast them as colonial fascists. The populist right monetizes resentment through podcasts and platforms.
Qatar amplifies it through Al Jazeera; Iran weaponizes it for Shi’ite supremacy; Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan mirrors it from the Sunni world. China and Russia know that anti-Israel fervor weakens the West—and even undermines U.S. President Donald Trump. A hollow pacifism finds its enemy in Israel alone, absolving Hamas and Hezbollah of responsibility.
The killers at Bondi and the Hamas financiers uncovered in Italy are not aberrations. They exist within our media ecosystems, our festivals, our institutions. They are applauded, excused and rewarded.
And yet—this is the essential difference from the past—there will be no new Shoah. The encirclement has been broken. Jews are strong. They are different. And, most importantly, they have Israel behind them.
That is the paradox of the past dark year: Antisemitism has become louder, cruder, more profitable—and at the same time less capable of finishing what it begins. The hope for a better and more peaceful year ahead lies precisely there.
