(Reuters) -Two Israeli embassy staffers were killed by a lone gunman in Washington, D.C., on Wednesday and a suspect who chanted pro-Palestine slogans is in custody, officials said.
Attacks against Jews and Jewish targets have risen worldwide since war erupted in Gaza in October 2023 following an attack on Israel by Hamas-led militants and Israel’s subsequent military offensive.
Here are some acts of violence that are thought to have deliberately targeted Jewish or Israeli people and places:
OCTOBER 18, 2023: Two hooded men threw Molotov cocktails at a synagogue in central Berlin.
NOVEMBER 16, 2023: A 53-year-old man was arrested in Tokyo after crashing a car into a barricade near the entrance of the Israeli embassy and injuring a police officer.
MAY 1, 2024: Warsaw authorities detained a teenager after a historic synagogue in Poland’s capital was hit by a bottle containing a flammable substance, police said.
MAY 17, 2024: French police shot dead a knife-wielding Algerian man who set fire to a synagogue and threatened police in the city of Rouen.
JUNE 2024: A Jordanian national broke into a solar power generation facility in Wedgefield, Florida, and caused more than $450,000 in damage. In May 2025, he was sentenced to six years in U.S. federal prison for threats against and attacks on businesses over their perceived support for Israel, after pleading guilty in December.
SEPTEMBER 5, 2024: German police shot dead an Austrian suspected Islamist gunman in Munich in an exchange of fire close to the Israeli consulate.
SEPTEMBER 6, 2024: Muhammad Shahzeb Khan, a Pakistani citizen living in Canada, was arrested and charged with planning a mass shooting at a Jewish center in Brooklyn around October 7, 2024 in support of the Islamic State, the Department of Justice said.
OCTOBER 10, 2024: A shooting took place near an Israeli target in the city of Gothenburg, which Denmark’s national broadcaster said was a unit of Israeli defence electronics firm Elbit Systems.
NOVEMBER 6, 2024: Masked men attacked two students who were demonstrating in support of Israel at Chicago’s DePaul University, resulting in minor injuries.
JANUARY 17, 2025: A home in Sydney previously owned by a senior Jewish community leader was vandalised and two cars were set on fire, with one spray-painted with an antisemitic slur.
JANUARY 21, 2025: A childcare centre in Sydney was set alight and antisemitic graffiti was sprayed on the wall.
REGIONAL RESEARCH DATA
Jewish advocacy group the Anti-Defamation League tallied 8,873 antisemitic incidents in the U.S. in 2023, a 140% increase over 2022 and a record high since it began keeping track in 1979.
In 2024, ADL tracked 9,354 incidents of antisemitic harassment, vandalism and assault in the United States. While the tally rose by only 5% from 2023, the group highlighted a significant rise in assaults, which accounted for 196 incidents.
According to the Protection Service for the Jewish Community, antisemitic acts in France rose from 436 in 2022 to 1,676 in 2023. 1,570 aggressions were recorded in 2024.
In Australia, antisemitic acts recorded from October 1, 2023 to September 20, 2024 showed a 316% increase from a year earlier to 2,062 incidents, a report by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry showed.
(Compiled by Alban Kacher and Mateusz Rabiega in Gdansk, editing by Milla Nissi-Prussak and Rod Nickel)
