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Year in review: World News in 2018

Diaspora Jews faced an increase in antisemitism in 2018 - and in October it led to the worst attack on Jews in US history

December 27, 2018 11:15
Mourning the victims of Pittsburgh
2 min read

Of the 15 million Jews in the world in 2018, the majority make a conscious decision to live outside of Israel. They do so in a world marked by a steep rise in hatred: antisemitism soared and antisemites were more confident in expressing themselves. Nowhere was this trend clearer than in the United States, home to the vast majority of non-Israeli Jews.

And 2018 was the year after Charlottesville, the notorious rally in which Donald Trump refused to dissociate himself from the marching neo-Nazis.

And we have seen the consequences of that presidential decision: the Anti-Defamation League reported the highest number of antisemitic incidents on record, from swastikas on synagogues to verbal and physical abuse on the streets.

Far too often the consequences were fatal. At the turn of the year, the body of Blaze Bernstein, 19, was found in a California woodland. His alleged murderer — a member of the neo-Nazi “Atomwaffen Division” — killed him because he was “Jewish and gay”, prosecutors said.