On May 8, 2025, the world witnessed the eightieth anniversary of the Allied victory in Europe over the Axis forces led by Adolph Hitler’s Nazi Germany. Though Hitler and his minions committed untold atrocities against humanity, the greatest of these was the Holocaust, the barbaric extermination of over six million Jews. Sadly, the same malevolent tenets of antisemitism that inspired the Holocaust have experienced a resurgence in Western civilization, spurring a new movement of violent opposition to Jews and the modern nation of Israel.
Antisemitism can be defined as unfounded animosity or hostility against Jews and Jewish institutions, resulting in discrimination, stereotyping, and violence to prevent Jews from taking their rightful place as equal members of society.
The origins of antisemitism date back to biblical times with the bad blood between Abraham’s sons, Ishmael and Isaac (Genesis 16; 21:8-21), and later conflicts between his grandsons, Jacob and Esau (Genesis 25:21-23; 26:34-35; 27). The Old Testament chronicles many manifestations of the acrimony that followed between their descendants (Amos 1:11; Psalm 83:1-6). In addition, history is replete with examples of Jewish persecution from ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome, and other nations.
Following Jesus Christ’s crucifixion at the instigation of the Jews, great enmity arose between them and the Christian church, which worked tirelessly—and beyond the fourth century, even violently—to convert them to Christianity. The anti-Jewish mindset morphed into many different forms of bigotry and oppression from the Middle Ages through the Enlightenment and into the twentieth century, encompassing religious, economic, racial, ideological, and cultural discrimination.
Today, the descendants of Ishmael and Esau likely established the Arab/Muslim nations of the Middle East, with a particular focus on controlling Palestine, the modern home of the State of Israel. From 1517 to the end of World War I, the Muslim-controlled Ottoman Empire did just that.
But the world changed significantly after the last century’s two world wars.
Following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War I, the British gained control over Palestine. Zionism—encouraging Jewish migration into Palestine—rose to prominence, primarily as a result of Nazi persecution in Europe. Then with the defeat of the Nazis in World War II and the horrors of the Holocaust brought to light, antisemitism began to take on pejorative overtones, especially in the West, and its once-proud adherents and their bigoted practices started to wane.
Sympathy for the plight of the Jews grew, and in 1947, the United Nations partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Arab territories. In 1948, the modern State of Israel was founded in Palestine despite the protests of the Palestinian Arabs and most of the greater Arab community.
Though there have been innumerable, well-documented wars and skirmishes in and around Israel and Palestine ever since, Jews in the West enjoyed a sort of golden age well into the early 2000s, as antisemitism in both Europe and the U.S. seemed bound to become a relic of an ugly past.
Sadly, the golden age was short-lived. Ira Rifkin, in his article “Anti-Semitism in the 21st Century” for MyJewishLearning.com, writes:
It is an irony of Jewish life that it took the Holocaust to give anti-Semitism a bad name. So widespread was international revulsion over the annihilation of six million Jews that following World War II anti-Semitism, even of the polite variety, became the hatred one dared not publicly express. But only for a time.
At the dawn of the 21st century, virulent, open anti-Semitism has surfaced yet again, and in a big way. One need only read a Jewish newspaper or website-replete as they are with accounts of verbal anti-Semitism by high officials and intellectuals, and anti-Semitic physical attacks by common street thugs-to understand the depth of concern this has stirred among Jews.
Over the past several decades, Israel, Israelis, and Jews have been frequent victims of violent aggression by the Palestinians and other Muslim-Arab terrorist groups, like the Palestinian Liberation Organization, Fatah, Hezbollah, Hamas, Al Qaeda, ISIS, et al. Typically, Israel defended its borders and citizenry efficiently and thoroughly while displaying great restraint to prevent excess civilian deaths among their enemies. This policy of restraint often prevented the Israelis from exercising the level of force they desired to punish their attackers adequately and prevent further aggression. However, after the brutal and horrific surprise attack by Hamas from Gaza on October 7, 2023, Israeli leaders felt pressured to cast off most restraint to eliminate the presence of Hamas in the Gaza Strip.
This Israeli determination resulted in a protracted, violent war and the decimation of virtually all semblance of Gazan civilization. Today, the battle rages on.
The world, however, has grown weary of the never-ending conflict and the inevitable violence that accompanies it. Noah Feldman, a Jewish journalist writing for Time, writes in his February 27, 2024 article, “The New Antisemitism”:
In the months following Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, antisemitic incidents increased substantially. The Anti-Defamation League [ADL], which keeps track, says they tripled in the US over the previous year, although its criteria also changed to include anti-Zionism. But from 2019 to 2022, the amount of people with highly antisemitic attitudes in the US had nearly doubled, the ADL found. In Europe, Human Rights Watch warned in 2019 of an “alarming” rise in antisemitism, prompting the European Union to adopt a strategic plan for fighting it two years later.
Further, Feldman states:
Instead of disappearing among people who would condemn neo-Nazis, antisemitism is morphing right now, before our very eyes. The core of this new antisemitism lies in the idea that Jews are not a historically oppressed people seeking self-preservation but instead oppressors: imperialists, colonialists, and even white supremacists. This view preserves vestiges of the trope that Jews exercise vast power.
Indeed, while many observers focus on left-wing protesters and activists targeting the Jewish community, a growing number of right-wing extremists—reminiscent of 1930s Nazi propaganda—spread unfounded rumors that Jews exercise untold power and influence over worldwide banking and political institutions in the U.S., Europe, Russia, China, and beyond.
Antisemitic fervor, primarily driven by Islamic hatred for Israel and supported by Western media, has found a potent breeding ground on the college campuses of Europe and the U.S. Ironically, the highly regarded schools of the Ivy League in America, once bastions of Israeli support, have turned into danger zones for Jewish students. Recently, violent, anti-Israel protests at Columbia University spilled onto the streets of New York City. They likely were a catalyst for the murders on May 21 of two young Israeli Embassy staffers as they left the American Jewish Committee’s ACCESS Young Diplomats Reception by a pro-Palestinian terrorist who shouted, “Free, free Palestine,” as police were carrying him away.
On that same night, in another part of New York City, Judge Michael Mukasey, former Attorney General of the U.S., spoke at the twentieth anniversary of the opening of the Jewish Children’s Museum, named for Ari Halberstam, a murder victim in a 1994 terror attack on the Brooklyn Bridge. The following is an excerpt from his speech:
It’s hard to believe that it has been 31 years since Ari Halberstam was murdered in an act of antisemitic terrorism—and it is indeed hard—it is harder still to believe that we are living in the midst of a widespread resurgence of antisemitism, not only around the world, but also in our own country, where many of us—and I include myself—believed that although there might be occasional antisemitic incidents, antisemitism would never become a widespread phenomenon. Oh boy, were we wrong.
As an anti-Semitic fever besets the globe, and especially the West, unlike any time since World War II, observant Christians (Matthew 24:32-33; Luke 21:34-36) should recall the critical role that the city of Jerusalem, amid the Holy Land, played throughout biblical times and the prophetic role it will play in end time events and beyond (Isaiah 33:20-22; Jeremiah 9:10-12; Revelation 21:2-7). War in this part of the world and persecution of the Jewish race have been all too common throughout history (Matthew 24:1-8). Eventually, though, the hatred, violence, and persecution will synchronize with other prophetic events (Daniel 11:41; 12:11; Matthew 24:15-29; Luke 19:43, 21:20) to usher in the second coming of Jesus Christ (Matthew 24:30-31).
