Is the Israel-Hamas War Spilling Over Into Europe?
With approximately 1,200 Israelis killed after the Oct. 7 Hamas attack, and an estimated 15,000 Palestinians killed as a result of the intense Israeli military response in the Gaza Strip, it’s been a devastating two months in Israel and Palestine. But the violence has not been limited to the Middle East.
The Israel-Hamas conflict is spilling over into Europe, as threats and physical attacks targeting minority groups have escalated across the continent, and a terrorist attack in Paris was allegedly triggered in part by the Gaza situation.
In France, the interior minister said that more than 1,500 antisemitic acts were recorded in the month following Hamas’s attack—three times more than in all of 2022. In the U.K., Jews have experienced “the worst wave of hate incidents in modern times,” according to the Community Security Trust, which recorded over 1,000 incidents in a month. The Dutch National Coordinator for Combating Anti-Semitism has received more reports of incidents (an 818 percent increase in a month). These incidents range from micro-aggressions, such as insults, to death threats, attacks on buildings and other infrastructure, or physical attacks, including the stabbing of a Jewish woman in Lyon. In Germany, two individuals allegedly threw petrol bombs on a synagogue on Oct. 18. In Austria, a fired damaged part of the Vienna Jewish cemetery and someone vandalized the cemetery with Swastika symbols on Nov. 1. Attacks on synagogues and Jewish schools occurred in several other countries in Europe.
Anti-Muslim incidents have increased significantly as well, although there is less systematic monitoring of such incidents, according to Human Rights Watch. In the U.K., the British charity Tell MAMA recorded a sevenfold increase in Islamophobic hate crimes in the month after Hamas’s attack. In Germany, CLAIM, the umbrella organization for civil society actors combating Islamophobia, has recorded three anti-Muslim incidents per day over the past few weeks, including personal assaults and attacks on mosques. In France, unidentified individuals have tagged several mosques with racist slurs and death threats. Peaceful pro-Palestine events were targeted as well, raising concerns about escalation of violence between different groups. In France, far-right extremists violently attacked a pro-Palestine conference in Lyon…
Thomas Renard, Joana Cook in Lawfare.
