Dutch Jews record unprecedented number of antisemitic incidents following Oct. 7

Dutch Jewry’s watchdog on antisemitism says it documented a record 379 incidents in 2023, most of which happened after the outbreak of Israel’s war with Hamas.

The tally for 2023 documented by the Center for Information and Documentation on Israel, or CIDI, constitutes a 245 percent increase over 2022, which also had had the previous all-time high, the group says in its annual report published Tuesday.

Of the 379 incidents, the majority of cases involve writing targeting Jewish people, such as online harassment or phone messages, the CIDI report says. There are also 66 “real-life” incidents, meaning they happened to people on the street, at their homes or at school, including three violent assaults. Another 34 incidents are of antisemitic vandalism.

“The most worrisome development we’re seeing is at schools,” CIDI writes in a statement. “The number of incidents in the education system is five times the tally of the previous year. Jewish students suffer insults, threats and violence.”

In one incident, CIDI says, a non-Jewish high school student threatened a Jewish one with a knife in an antisemitic hate crime.