For years, French politician Shannon Seban has encountered antisemitism from both the far left and the far right—an experience she said reflects a broader and growing trend.
Seban’s troubles began in July 2023 when she was about three years into her term as a city council member in a suburb of Paris. A neo-Nazi activist posted antisemitic comments on his website. “He targeted my Jewish nose, and he made some caricature that was crazy,” Seban told Christianity Today. Seban’s lawyer filed a complaint about the hate speech with the local court, but the man avoided prosecution after reportedly fleeing to Japan.
The attacks against her intensified after the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack. Seban campaigned for a seat in the French parliament, running against a far-left candidate from a party she described as “deeply antisemitic.”
One week into her political campaign, a crowd of around 300 people surrounded her during a public gathering and physically assaulted members of her team, she recalled. Some in the crowd shouted, “Move away from here, dirty Zionist!”
Seban feared for her safety and fled the scene, and France’s Ministry of the Interior put her under police protection. “That was maybe a turning point in my political life and my personal life,” Seban said at a religious freedom summit held in Malta in early March. She noted that the experience prompted her to write the book Française et juive, et alors? (French and Jewish—So What?). “We need to wake up before it’s too late.”
Image courtesy of Shannon SebanOctober 7 was also a turning point for Shirin Taber, an Iranian American Christian and the founder of Empower Women Media (EWM), which hosted the summit. When Taber saw images of campus protests and heard news about the growing number of attacks against Jews, she decided she could no longer be a bystander, and she added antisemitism to the list of challenges EWM addresses. EWM is a women’s leadership network that uses media, education, and leadership events to promote human rights and religious freedom across the Middle East, North Africa, Pakistan, and the West.
Taber and her team produced a 13-minute video titled“Who Moved the Jews?” with the goal of educating Christians and Muslims about Jewish history. “Even though [Jews] were dispersed and had to live in different countries, they actually brought a lot of value wherever they lived—whether it was Morocco or Jordan or Egypt or Iran,” Taber said.
Antisemitic incidents in the US spiked within weeks of the Hamas attacks—rising by nearly 400 percent. Rather than subsiding, the wave has continued at unprecedented levels and evolved into deadly acts of violence around the world, including attacks that killed 2 Israeli diplomats in Washington, DC; 2 worshipers at a synagogue in Manchester, UK; and 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney.
In Australia, researchers reported more than a 300 percent increase in antisemitic incidents against Jews in 2024 compared to the previous year. In France, the number of incidents in 2024 was nearly three times higher than in 2022. Many Jews—including college students—are attempting to hide their Jewish identity by removing their traditional kippahs (skullcaps) and refraining from speaking Hebrew in public.
The war with Iran, which began February 28, may be adding fuel to the fire.
On March 5, Antisemitism Research Center reported a 34 percent increase in global incidents against Jewish communities compared to the week prior. Nearly half of the 154 recorded incidents were linked to the war and were motivated either by support for the Iranian regime or by hatred of Jews and Israel.
“Jews are being scapegoated today in a shocking and dangerous way,” said David Pileggi, rector of Christ Church in Jerusalem’s Old City. An American, Pileggi has lived among Christians, Muslims, and Jews in Israel for more than four decades and holds a master’s degree in Jewish studies.
Antisemitism operates like a parasite, he said, attaching itself to other movements, ideologies, and political parties. Pileggi noted that it is gaining traction among both the far right (“If the common good is lower taxes and more economic freedom, who’s holding that up? The Jews”) as well as the far left (“If the common good is for more state ownership and more government control and taxing the rich, who’s stopping that? The Jews.”)
He sees a historical pattern: After Germany lost World War I, it needed a scapegoat. Nazi propaganda claimed the Jews of Wall Street were cooperating with the Jews of the Soviet Union to control the world and to squeeze Germany. “If you repeat these charges over and over again, then people start to believe a lie,” Pileggi said. Now some in the US are once again blaming Jews for societal problems amid fear of the West’s decline.
For the past 20 years, Pileggi has led annual tours to Poland for Christians—including seminary professors and pastors—to learn about Jewish history, the Holocaust, and Jewish–Christian relations. Poland’s Jewish community was one of the largest in the world before the Nazis murdered 90 percent of the country’s Jewish inhabitants.
He is concerned that the memory of the 6 million Jews who perished during the Holocaust has begun to fade.
“One of the most-often-repeated commandments in the Bible that God tells his people is to remember,” Pileggi said. For much of its history, Christendom fostered hostility toward Jews that included forced expulsions and periodic violence.
Pileggi encourages Christians to counter antisemitism by first addressing conspiracy theories and false narratives about Judaism circulating in the church—including those spread online by prominent conservative commentators like Candace Owens and Tucker Carlson.
Among the claims circulating online are that Judaism is inherently racist (despite the historic inclusion of converts such as Ruth and the multiethnic diversity of Jewish communities today); that the church is the new Israel, so God’s dealings with the Jewish people are no longer relevant (despite the ongoing significance of the Jewish people in Romans 9–11 as well as the inherent worth of all individuals); and that the Jewish people were responsible for the death of Jesus (a charge that most Christian traditions reject, pointing instead to the teaching in Acts 2:23 that Christ was crucified according to “God’s deliberate plan and foreknowledge” even as specific individuals bore responsibility).
“They are distorting the message of Scripture and distorting the character of God,” Pileggi said. “All of this is very dangerous for us as a community and for our spiritual health and the witness we want to present to the world.”
Pileggi said Christians play an important role amid rising antisemitism, including by learning from history so we don’t repeat mistakes and by not being bystanders. Taking a stand against antisemitism, he noted, does not require withdrawing support for Palestinians.
Seban—who is director of European affairs for CAM—shares a similar perspective. She has expressed support for an eventual Palestinian state but said she continues to face harassment. She added that Jewish university students across France frequently contact her to report antisemitic incidents.
Seban, who has Algerian and Moroccan heritage, believes anti-Zionism is the latest form of antisemitism. “You can definitely criticize the political choices, the military choices, that are made by Bibi Netanyahu,” she said, referring to the Israeli prime minister’s nickname. “But when you deny the right of the people to have their own state, this is antisemitism.”
CAM’s researchers concluded that the far left and Islamists, often under the “free Palestine” movement, were responsible for more than 80 percent of global antisemitic incidents in 2025, with the far left accounting for the largest share—nearly 63 percent.
At the Malta summit, Seban shared her ideas for countering antisemitism in France. In addition to advocating politically for religious tolerance, she plans to launch boot camps for teens that break down stereotypes about Jews—as well as Muslims and Christians.
Meanwhile, Soraya Deen, an American Muslim attorney and member of the International Religious Freedom Roundtable in Washington, DC, has drafted a proposal to build a cohort of 20 Arab Israeli women willing to share their life experiences on social media and television platforms.
The idea emerged from a recent conversation Deen had with an Arab Israeli woman who expressed gratitude for her Israeli citizenship and the opportunities her country has provided for her community. Together, they hope to identify those among Israel’s 2 million Arab citizens—20 percent of the population—“who will really speak out, stand up for Israel, and call out antisemitism and speak specifically to the Arab world,” Deen told CT.
Taber said her Jewish friends have taught her the importance of working together to protect religious freedom. “We cannot have a religiously free society if you only defend your own rights to religious freedom,” she said. “You must also defend the rights of your neighbor, especially Jews, who have been persecuted historically.”
