# What Is Antisemitism? The Oldest Hatred, Explained

> What is antisemitism? The IHRA definition, 2,000 years of history, how it looks today after October 7, what the numbers say, and how to fight it.

- URL: https://www.six1trey.org/en/blog/what-is-antisemitism-the-oldest-hatred-explained
- Language: en
- Published: 2026-10-20
- Author: Ariel Hanasi · Six1Trey
- Category: Antisemitism
- Tags: Antisemitism, Israel, Jewish History, Holocaust, Zionism

**Antisemitism** is hatred of Jews. That's the short answer. The long answer is that it is the oldest hatred on the planet, the one that changes its clothes every few centuries and never really leaves the room. It was religious in one era, racial in another, and today it often dresses up as politics. The target stays the same.

If you grew up on a block, you know how this works. A rumor starts, it gets repeated, it becomes "what everybody knows," and one day somebody acts on it. The Jewish people have been on the wrong end of that cycle for more than two thousand years.

At Six1Trey we teach Torah in street language, and we are proud Zionists. This page is our straight answer to a question a lot of people are afraid to ask out loud: *what actually is antisemitism, and what do I do about it?* Every number and quote below links to its source.

## The definition: what the IHRA says

The most widely used definition in the world today comes from the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), a body of governments that work on Holocaust education and remembrance. On 26 May 2016, the IHRA plenary adopted this [working definition of antisemitism](https://holocaustremembrance.com/resources/working-definition-antisemitism):

> "Antisemitism is a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews. Rhetorical and physical manifestations of antisemitism are directed toward Jewish or non-Jewish individuals and/or their property, toward Jewish community institutions and religious facilities."

Notice two things. First, *a certain perception*: antisemitism starts in the head before it reaches the hands. Once somebody sees Jews as too powerful, too sneaky or too guilty, every fact gets bent to fit the picture. Second, it doesn't stop at Jews. A spray-painted synagogue, a non-Jewish neighbor threatened for defending Jews, a business targeted as "Jewish-owned": all of that counts.

The IHRA definition comes with a list of examples, and some of them are about Israel. The American Jewish Committee keeps a clear [explainer of the full text](https://www.ajc.org/the-working-definition-of-antisemitism). Two of the examples matter most for the arguments you'll hear in 2026:

- **"Denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination,** e.g., by claiming that the existence of a State of Israel is a racist endeavor."
- **"Holding Jews collectively responsible for actions of the state of Israel."**

And here is the line that people who attack the definition never quote: according to the IHRA text, **"criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic."**

So no, the definition does not ban criticizing the Israeli government. Israelis do that every day, loudly. It says that when the Jewish state is held to a standard no other country faces, or when Jews in Brooklyn or Bogotá get blamed for what happens in Gaza, something else is going on.

## A hatred older than most countries

### The ancient world

The Torah itself records the first antisemitic speech in history. In the Book of Esther, the Persian official Haman goes to King Achashverosh and pitches genocide like a business plan:

> "There is a certain people, scattered and dispersed among the other peoples in all the provinces of your realm, whose laws are different from those of any other people and who do not obey the king's laws; and it is not in Your Majesty's interest to tolerate them." ([Esther 3:8](https://www.sefaria.org/Esther.3.8))

Look at the moves: they're everywhere, they're different, they're disloyal, and getting rid of them is just smart policy. Twenty-five centuries later, the script hasn't changed much.

Our Sages saw this as a pattern, not an accident. Every year at the Passover Seder, Jews around the world say: "In every single generation people rise up to destroy us, but the Holy One, blessed be He, saves us from their hands" ([Pesach Haggadah](https://www.sefaria.org/Pesach_Haggadah,_Magid,_In_the_Beginning_Our_Fathers_Were_Idol_Worshipers.5)). That line is not paranoia. It's a history lesson you say over a glass of wine.

### Christian Europe

For many centuries in Europe, the hatred got a religious engine. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum explains that for centuries the Church taught that Jews were responsible for the death of Jesus, an idea most historians today reject, since the execution was carried out by Roman authorities ([USHMM, Antisemitism in History](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/antisemitism-in-history-from-the-early-church-to-1400)). When the Black Death killed millions in the 14th century, some people blamed the Jews for that too.

Then came the **blood libel**: the lie that Jews used the blood of Christian children for their rituals. The first known case in medieval Europe was William of Norwich, in England, in **1144** ([USHMM, Blood Libel](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/blood-libel)). The Torah forbids even eating an animal's blood. The charge made no sense. It didn't matter. Blood libel accusations led to riots, massacres and executions for centuries. The Catholic Church itself eventually repudiated the charge, and in 1965 removed a supposed child "martyr" of a blood libel, Simon of Trent, from its list of saints.

Expulsions followed the lies. In England there was a massacre of Jews in York in March **1190**, and on 18 July **1290** an edict expelled the entire Jewish community from the country ([Jewish Virtual Library, Chronology of the Jews in Britain](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/a-chronology-of-the-jews-in-britain)). In Spain, the Alhambra Decree of 30 March **1492** gave Jews four months to convert or leave; the deadline was 30 July 1492 ([Jewish Virtual Library, The Spanish Expulsion](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/the-spanish-expulsion-1492)).

That last one hits home for a lot of Latinos. Many families across Latin America carry names, customs and memories that trace back to Jews who were forced to convert in Spain and Portugal. The hatred that chased them out of Iberia is part of our own continent's history.

### Pogroms and the Protocols

*Pogrom* is a Russian word meaning "to wreak havoc, to demolish violently." The USHMM notes that waves of anti-Jewish riots swept the Russian Empire in **1881–1884**, and that between **1918 and 1920** pogrom violence in Ukraine, Poland and Belarus killed tens of thousands of Jews ([USHMM, Pogroms](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms)).

In April **1903**, in the city of Kishinev, a mob spent three days attacking Jews, wounding hundreds and murdering more than forty. A local newspaper had whipped up the crowd with antisemitic stories, including a blood libel. That same year, a Russian newspaper began publishing *The Protocols of the Elders of Zion*, a fake document claiming to reveal a secret Jewish plan to control the world. The Times of London called it "a clumsy forgery" in 1921, and much of it was copied from an 1864 French satire that doesn't even mention Jews ([USHMM, The Protocols](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/protocols-of-the-elders-of-zion)).

It's still being shared online today. Same lie, new screen.

### The Holocaust

Everything above was the warm-up. In Germany, the hatred got a state, an army, railroads, paperwork and factories built for killing. On 9–10 November **1938**, the Nazi regime unleashed Kristallnacht, a nationwide campaign of street violence against Jews, their homes, shops and synagogues ([USHMM, Pogroms](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/pogroms)).

Yad Vashem, Israel's national Holocaust memorial, describes the Holocaust as an unprecedented genocide, total and systematic, carried out by Nazi Germany and its collaborators with the aim of annihilating the Jewish people. The commonly used figure is **six million** Jews murdered; Yad Vashem explains that there is no exact count and that its research puts the number of victims between five and six million ([Yad Vashem, What was the Holocaust?](https://www.yadvashem.org/holocaust/about/what-was-the-holocaust.html)).

### The Arab world, 1941 to the 1970s

People often forget that Jews lived across the Middle East and North Africa for many centuries. In Iraq, Jewish communities existed from the 6th century BCE, the time of the Babylonian exile that [Psalm 137](https://www.sefaria.org/Psalms.137.1) mourns, hundreds of years before Islam arrived ([USHMM](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-farhud)). Those communities disappeared in a few decades.

On 1–2 June **1941**, during the Shavuot holiday, a mob attacked the Jews of Baghdad in what Iraqis called the **Farhud**. The USHMM records that rioters murdered between 150 and 180 Jews (an official commission at the time counted 128 dead), injured hundreds and damaged over 1,500 homes and businesses. By 1951, about 124,000 of Iraq's 135,000 Jews had left for Israel ([USHMM, The Farhud](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/the-farhud)).

Across the region, the same thing happened in different ways. The Jewish Virtual Library counts about **851,000** Jews living in Arab countries in 1948. Of the roughly **820,000 Jewish refugees** who left between 1948 and 1972, about 586,000 were resettled in Israel and more than 200,000 went to Europe and the Americas ([Jewish Virtual Library, Jewish Refugees from Arab Countries](https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jewish-refugees-from-arab-countries)). Communities that had lived in Baghdad, Cairo, Damascus, Tripoli and Aden for millennia are almost entirely gone.

Those refugees did not stay refugees. Israel took them in. When someone calls Israel a "European colonial project," remember the families from Morocco, Iraq, Yemen and Syria who built it.

## How antisemitism looks today

### 1. Anti-Zionism that denies Jews a state

Disagreeing with an Israeli policy is politics. Saying the Jewish people, alone among the peoples of the earth, have no right to a country of their own is something different. It's the oldest move in the book, *the rules are different for Jews*, pointed at the one place where Jews are not a minority.

That is why the IHRA lists "denying the Jewish people their right to self-determination" as an example of antisemitism. Nobody says the French don't deserve France or that Colombians don't deserve Colombia. When only the Jewish nation's existence is up for debate, that's not a policy argument anymore.

The other giveaway is when "Zionist" becomes a code word. When a sign says "no Zionists allowed" outside a Jewish deli, a Hillel or a synagogue, everybody knows who they mean.

### 2. Online hate

The internet took the Protocols and gave them an algorithm. In the American Jewish Committee's *State of Antisemitism in America 2025* report, based on surveys conducted in fall 2025, **73%** of American Jews said they had experienced antisemitism online, either by seeing it or by being targeted ([AJC, State of Antisemitism in America 2025](https://www.ajc.org/AntisemitismReport2025)). Conspiracy memes, "just asking questions" videos, Holocaust jokes, "they control the media" threads: it's the same libel in short-form content.

### 3. Campus

College campuses became one of the hottest spots after October 7, 2023. The ADL recorded **1,694** antisemitic incidents on U.S. campuses in 2024. In 2025 that number fell by 66% to **583**, but the ADL notes it is still almost three times higher than in 2021 ([ADL, Audit of Antisemitic Incidents 2025](https://www.adl.org/resources/report/audit-antisemitic-incidents-2025)). In the AJC's 2025 survey, **42%** of current or recent Jewish college students said they experienced antisemitism during their time on campus ([AJC 2025](https://www.ajc.org/AntisemitismReport2025)).

### 4. The surge after October 7

On 7 October 2023, Hamas terrorists crossed from Gaza into southern Israel and murdered about **1,200 people**, according to the Israeli government's revised count reported by [NPR](https://www.npr.org/2023/11/11/1212458974/israel-revises-down-its-death-toll-hamas-attacks-oct-7), and took hundreds of hostages into Gaza.

You would expect the world to stand with the victims. In many places the opposite happened, and the numbers below tell that story.

## What the numbers say

Note the years: these numbers change, and we'll update this page when new data comes out.

**ADL Audit (incidents reported in the U.S. in 2025, published May 2026):**

- The ADL counted **6,274** antisemitic incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism in the U.S. in 2025. That is 33% lower than the record **9,354** in 2024, but it was still the third-highest year since the ADL started tracking in 1979 ([ADL Audit 2025](https://www.adl.org/resources/report/audit-antisemitic-incidents-2025)).
- Physical **assaults hit a record: 203**, up from 196 in 2024, including **32** involving a deadly weapon. **Three people were killed** in antisemitic attacks in 2025: two in the shooting outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., on May 21, and one who died after the firebombing in Boulder, Colorado, on June 1 ([ADL press release, May 6, 2026](https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/adl-records-historic-high-antisemitic-assaults-and-attacks-deadly-weapons)).
- Incidents with elements related to Israel or Zionism made up **45%** of the total in 2025 (2,847), down from 58% in 2024 ([ADL Audit 2025](https://www.adl.org/resources/report/audit-antisemitic-incidents-2025)).

**FBI hate crime data (as reported by ADL and AJC):**

- In **2024**, the FBI recorded **1,938** single-bias anti-Jewish hate crime incidents, the highest it had ever recorded at the time, and nearly 70% of all religion-based hate crimes ([ADL, August 5, 2025](https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/anti-jewish-hate-crimes-comprised-nearly-70-all-religion-based-hate-crimes)).
- In **2025**, the FBI recorded **1,528** anti-Jewish hate crime incidents, down about 21%, but still **63.5%** of all religiously motivated hate crimes and about 14% of all hate crimes, while Jews are roughly **2%** of the U.S. population ([AJC, August 17, 2026](https://www.ajc.org/news/anti-jewish-hate-crimes-decline-but-remain-the-most-reported-religion-based-crimes); [ADL, August 17, 2026](https://www.adl.org/resources/press-release/2025-marked-third-highest-year-record-anti-jewish-hate-crimes-fbi-reports)).

**AJC survey of American Jews (fall 2025):**

- **91%** said violent attacks in the past year made them feel less safe as Jews in the U.S.
- **55%** changed their behavior out of fear of antisemitism.
- **31%** were personally targeted by antisemitism, in person or online, in the past year ([AJC 2025](https://www.ajc.org/AntisemitismReport2025)).

Do the math on that FBI line. About 2% of the population, and well over half of all religious hate crimes. When a group that small takes that many hits, it isn't random.

A fair note: some critics argue that groups like the ADL count too broadly. The ADL says it excludes legitimate political protest and criticism of Israeli policy from its audit. Even if you set the audits aside completely, the FBI numbers and the dead bodies are not opinions.

## Why the Jews? A Torah answer

Historians explain antisemitism with scapegoating, economics, religious rivalry and nationalism. Each explains part of it; none explains why it survives every era. Our tradition has its own language for it. When Yaakov meets his brother Esav after twenty years, the Torah says Esav kissed him. Rashi brings a teaching from Rabbi Shimon bar Yochai: "Is it not well known that Esav hated Yaakov? But at that moment his pity was aroused and he kissed him with his whole heart" ([Rashi on Genesis 33:4](https://www.sefaria.org/Rashi_on_Genesis.33.4.2)).

It cuts both ways. There is a hatred that runs like a law of nature, and even Esav could be moved to real love. We don't believe every non-Jew hates Jews; our own lives prove otherwise. We do believe the hatred is real and stubborn, and that pretending otherwise gets people killed.

## How to fight it: a practical playbook

Talk is cheap. Here is what you can actually do.

### 1. Report it

If you see an antisemitic incident, report it. If someone is in danger, call the police first. Then report it through the [ADL's incident form](https://www.adl.org/report-incident) or your local Jewish federation's security team. The AJC found that most people never report it: **77%** of American Jews said they did not report the antisemitism they experienced in 2025 ([AJC, Insights and Analysis](https://www.ajc.org/AntisemitismReport2025/InsightsandAnalysis)). Numbers drive funding, security, laws and police attention. If it isn't reported, officially it didn't happen.

Online, screenshot it and use the platform's reporting tools.

### 2. Show up

The most powerful thing a non-Jew can do is be present. Go to the vigil. Show up at the synagogue's open house. Sit in the front row at the Hillel event that's getting protested. Hate counts on Jews feeling alone. Make the math wrong.

On the streets we called it "pulling up." When somebody's getting jumped, you don't post about it later. You pull up.

### 3. Learn the history

Go deeper than this page. Read the [USHMM Holocaust Encyclopedia](https://encyclopedia.ushmm.org/content/en/article/blood-libel). Learn the names: Norwich, York, Kishinev, Kristallnacht, the Farhud. When somebody repeats an old lie in new words, you'll recognize it. And learn Torah. If you want to understand why the Jewish people have survived everyone who tried to erase them, start where it started, with Avraham. Our OGz page on [Avraham](/ogz/avraham) and our parasha study [Lech Lecha: leaving without an address](/en/blog/parshat-lech-lecha-leaving-without-an-address) are good places to begin.

### 4. Support Israel

Criticize any government you want, including Israel's, but stand up for the existence of the one Jewish state on earth. Read our companion piece, [Why We Stand With Israel: Zionism Explained Without the Noise](/en/blog/why-we-stand-with-israel-zionism-explained). Push back on lies with facts and links, not screaming.

And hold the line on one distinction: **Hamas is not the Palestinian people.** Hamas is a terrorist organization that murdered Israelis on October 7 and has brought ruin on Gaza's civilians too. Standing with Israel and caring about innocent Palestinian lives are not opposites. Anyone who tells you that you have to hate one to love the other is selling you something.

### 5. Build alliances

Antisemitism almost never travels alone. The people who hate Jews usually have a list, and Black people, Latinos and immigrants tend to be on it too.

There is history here worth knowing. In 1965 Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel marched with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. at Selma, and afterwards wrote that he felt his legs were praying ([Princeton University, on Julian Zelizer's biography of Heschel](https://history.princeton.edu/about/publications/abraham-joshua-heschel-life-radical-amazement)). Black and Jewish Americans have stood together before, and they can do it again.

For Latinos, the bond runs through our own history: the families of Spain and Portugal who were forced to hide who they were. A Spanish-speaking voice that stands up for Jews carries weight. Use it.

Practically: invite a rabbi to your church or community center, and your pastor to a Shabbat dinner. Nobody gets jumped for who they are.

### 6. Check yourself

Plenty of antisemitism is casual: a joke about money, a line about who "runs" the banks, a lyric everybody repeats. If you grew up like we did, you heard all of it. Teshuvah, real change, starts with catching it in your own mouth.

## Why this matters to a kid from the streets

Six1Trey is run by Ariel Hanasi, who grew up between Jamaica, Queens and Bogotá, came up in the street life, and is now on the path to conversion. People sometimes ask why someone who isn't born Jewish would take on a fight like this.

The answer is simple. The Torah says Avraham's family would be a blessing: "I will bless those who bless you and curse the one who curses you; and all the families of the earth shall bless themselves by you" ([Genesis 12:3](https://www.sefaria.org/Genesis.12.3)). When you choose to join a people, you join their story, including the part where people hate them for no reason. You don't get to take the light and skip the fight.

And anybody who came up hard knows what it feels like when everybody decided who you are before you opened your mouth. That's antisemitism: a verdict before the trial. We're not going to sit quiet while it's done to the Jews.

## FAQ

### What is antisemitism in simple words?

Antisemitism is hatred of, or hostility toward, Jews as Jews. The IHRA working definition, adopted in 2016, calls it "a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred toward Jews," and says it can target Jewish people, their property, Jewish institutions and synagogues, and even non-Jews connected to them.

### What is the IHRA definition of antisemitism?

It is a non-legally binding working definition adopted by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance on 26 May 2016. It defines antisemitism as a perception of Jews that may be expressed as hatred, and gives examples, including Holocaust denial, conspiracy myths, holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel's actions, and denying Jewish self-determination.

### Is criticizing Israel antisemitic?

No. The IHRA text itself says criticism of Israel similar to that leveled against any other country cannot be regarded as antisemitic. It becomes antisemitic when it denies the Jewish people any right to a state, holds Jews everywhere responsible for Israel's government, applies double standards, or uses old antisemitic myths against Israel.

### What is the blood libel?

The blood libel is the false accusation that Jews used the blood of Christian children for religious rituals. The first known medieval European case was William of Norwich, England, in 1144. The lie led to massacres for centuries, and the Catholic Church later repudiated it, removing Simon of Trent from its list of saints in 1965.

### How many antisemitic incidents were there in the U.S. in 2025?

The ADL counted 6,274 antisemitic incidents of assault, harassment and vandalism in 2025, down 33% from a record 9,354 in 2024, but still the third-highest total since 1979. Assaults reached a record 203. FBI data recorded 1,528 anti-Jewish hate crimes, 63.5% of religion-based hate crimes.

### What can I do to fight antisemitism?

Report incidents to police and to groups like the ADL, show up in person when Jewish communities are targeted, learn the history so you recognize old lies, support Israel's right to exist, build alliances with other communities, and call out casual antisemitic jokes and conspiracy talk among your own friends and family.

## From the book

In *G2G: From Gangster to Ger*, Ariel Hanasi tells the story of a kid from Jamaica, Queens and the streets of Bogotá who walked toward the Jewish people while the world was walking away from them. If this page hit you, the book will too. [Read G2G free](/en/book/g2g).

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*Sources: IHRA (2016), USHMM, Yad Vashem, Jewish Virtual Library, ADL Audit 2025 (May 2026), FBI data for 2024–2025 as reported by ADL and AJC, AJC State of Antisemitism in America 2025, NPR. Texts from [Sefaria](https://www.sefaria.org/Esther.3.8). All linked above; statistics are for the years stated.*

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