For generations, many Jews living in democratic societies have held a quiet belief: “It can’t happen here.”

After the horrors of the 20th century, that assumption felt reasonable. Jewish communities in North America, Western Europe, and Australia built thriving institutions, achieved levels of integration once unimaginable, and lived under legal protections designed specifically to prevent the return of the antisemitism that had once consumed Europe. Compared with the long arc of Jewish history, the post–World War II era seemed to represent something new:  a period in which Jews could finally live openly and safely across much of the democratic world.

Over the past year, however, that assumption has begun to collide with a series of violent events that many Jewish communities can no longer ignore. Across multiple continents, Jews have been attacked not for anything they did, but simply for being Jewish, and strikingly many of these incidents have occurred in countries long considered among the safest places in the world for Jewish life.

In May 2025, two Israeli embassy staff members were murdered outside a Jewish event in Washington, DC. The following month, a march supporting Israeli hostages in Colorado was attacked with firebombs, killing one participant and severely injuring others, including a Holocaust survivor. During Yom Kippur services in October 2025, a knife-wielding attacker stormed a synagogue in Manchester, United Kingdom, killing two worshippers and injuring several others before being stopped by police.

Other incidents followed across the world. In July 2025, a synagogue in Melbourne, Australia, was deliberately set on fire while Jews gathered for religious services. Months later, in December, a mass shooting at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney’s Bondi Beach left more than a dozen people dead. That same year in Amsterdam, Jewish soccer fans were violently assaulted in the streets following a match involving Israel’s Maccabi Tel Aviv team, amid chants calling to “globalize the intifada.” In Cyprus, an Israeli tourist was beaten unconscious after attackers heard him speaking Hebrew, while in March 2026 Israelis vacationing at a ski resort in Bulgaria were assaulted after their language identified them.

And just days ago, in Michigan, a truck was driven into a synagogue during preschool hours — an attack that could easily have become a massacre had armed security not intervened.

Individually, each of these incidents is tragic. Taken together, they suggest something more troubling. According to organizations that monitor antisemitism globally, more than 800 severe antisemitic incidents were recorded worldwide in 2025 alone, including more than twenty murders. These figures represent only the most extreme cases — shootings, stabbings, arsons, and other acts of violence targeting Jews and Jewish institutions — while many more incidents of harassment, intimidation, and assault never reach international headlines.

Violence rarely appears without warning. It tends to grow in an atmosphere where hatred becomes increasingly normalized. Over the past year, chants calling to “globalize the intifada” have become common in demonstrations across Western cities. Jewish students report harassment on university campuses, and synagogues and Jewish schools in multiple countries have been forced to increase security as threats rise.

None of this means that Jewish life in the diaspora is collapsing. Governments in the United States, the United Kingdom, and across Europe have taken real steps to protect Jewish communities. Many political leaders have spoken forcefully against antisemitism, and millions of non-Jewish allies continue to stand with Jews. Jewish life outside Israel remains vibrant in many places.

Yet Jewish history carries a difficult lesson: when violent antisemitism begins to rise, it rarely remains contained. For centuries, Jewish communities have lived through periods when they believed the societies around them had moved beyond antisemitism for good. Often those periods lasted decades, sometimes generations — until suddenly they did not.

Jewish history carries another difficult lesson as well: warning signs are often easiest to recognize only in hindsight. In many countries across the centuries, Jewish communities reassured themselves that the violence around them was temporary, that the institutions of their societies would ultimately hold, and that the hostility they were witnessing could not escalate further. Sometimes they were right. But sometimes they realized too late that what appeared to be isolated incidents were in fact early signals of something much larger.

The State of Israel was created in part because of that historical reality. It was meant to ensure that Jews would never again be entirely dependent on the tolerance of others for their safety. For the first time in two thousand years, Jews have a sovereign state that exists precisely for that purpose.

None of this means Jews must abandon the diaspora. Jewish communities have flourished across the world for centuries, and many will continue to do so. But the events of the past year raise a question that deserves to be discussed openly rather than only whispered in private conversations.

If violent antisemitism continues to escalate across multiple countries at once, should Jews begin reconsidering where they build their futures?

It is not a question born of panic.

It is a question born of history and history has taught the Jewish people that ignoring such questions rarely makes them disappear.

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)