ROME — Jews in the Italian capital over centuries have survived emperors, invasions, popes and fascists. The decision to leave is not taken lightly. But today, amid a rising tide of anti-Israel sentiment in Europe, it’s something people are again talking about.
Rome’s Jewish community is modest in size — 13,000 to 15,000 people in a city of almost 3 million — but it is the oldest in Europe, with roots dating to the second century BC. Its heart is the one-time Jewish ghetto on the banks of the Tiber River, which carries many tragic reminders of Oct. 16, 1943, when Nazi soldiers raided the neighborhood and sent more than a thousand Roman Jews to their deaths in concentration camps.
Over the last 20 years, the neighborhood has emerged as a lively quarter with popular restaurants and bars. But that’s been tempered in recent months by a visible increase in security and vandalism, including antisemitic symbols and slogans spray-painted on walls. There have been reports of aggressive confrontations with Jewish students outside a school in Rome and at least one physical attack on Israeli tourists in the city.
“The Jews of Rome have been through a lot in their history,” said Marco, a Jewish waiter in his 50s working at one of the restaurants that thrives behind The Great Synagogue of Rome. He spoke on the condition that he not be fully identified.
“We can feel an old tension rising,” he told The Washington Times. “I haven’t heard of anyone who’s left because of what’s been happening. But people talk about it. Relatives in New York and Israel come up in conversation more often. It’s a possibility that’s coming into focus.”
The experience isn’t limited to Rome.
Sympathy for Israel spiked across Europe in the wake of the Hamas attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. But that quickly morphed into growing anger over the suffering of Palestinians at the hands of the Israeli military.
According to data from the Armed Conflict Location and Event Data Project, a non-profit monitoring organization, European countries have hosted hundreds of pro-Palestine demonstrations each month over the last year, with most drawing tens of thousands — and some even hundreds of thousands — of protestors. Though most demonstrations have been peaceful calls for a ceasefire and solidarity, some have resulted in clashes with police, arrests and damage to Jewish cultural sites.
“Jews have had to develop an innate capacity to understand when to respond to political, economic, and cultural crisis situations,” Daniel Staetsky, a social statistician and director of the London-based European Jewish Demography Unit, said in an interview.
“It’s easy to believe now that Jews in Germany in the 1930s should have known to leave, but you must remember that when Adolph Hitler came to power in 1933, nobody knew the ’Final Solution’ would come in 1939. Still, around half of Jews left,” Dr. Staetsky said. “The same thing with the fall of the Soviet Union in 1989.”
Analysts say trends indicate Jews again are fleeing Europe.
“There are four main ways to measure antisemitism,” Italy-born Sergio Dellapergola, a professor emeritus specializing in Jewish population studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, said. “You can ask Jews if they feel they are victims of it, you can ask the general public if they think there is antisemitism, you can count the acts of violence, or you can interpret what is found in the media and on social networks.”
All four metrics, Mr. Dellapergola said, produce different results, though he said all the data was showing that the situation in Europe is moving in the same direction. The main difference is the rate at which it’s approaching what he called “an unprecedented level of hostility by modern standards.”
Gunter Jikeli, a professor of Germanic and Jewish studies at Indiana University, told The Washington Times that recent events are putting European Jews in a nearly impossible predicament.
“The lines between anti-Zionism and antisemitism are becoming blurrier every day,” he said. “This doesn’t happen in other contexts. People disagree with the Israeli government, and that’s fine. But many countries have terrible governments; look at Iran. But you don’t see people lashing out at Persian restaurants.”
His research has shown a dramatic increase in reported European antisemitic acts and in violent acts against Jews or Jewish institutions since the start of the 2023 Gaza War. Though data for last year is still being collated, he said preliminary results show a flattening in the number of incidents compared to the peaks in 2023 and 2024, though still well above the pre-war baseline.
“I think most European Jews like their home and they want to stay,” he said. “But at the same time, many must be asking themselves, ’Do my children have a future in my country?’”
The plight of European Jews earned headlines earlier this month after Robert Garson, a British-born attorney working closely with U.S. President Trump, announced he was discussing the possibility of offering asylum to British Jews, saying that the country “is no longer a safe place” for its Jewish community. So far, there has been no formal asylum proposal.
The statistics from Mr. Jikeli and other sources show an increase in antisemitic violence in the U.K. in line with similar trends in France, Germany and other European states.
Information from the Israeli Interior Ministry shows around 3,300 French Jews left their country to move to Israel last year, under Aliyah, Israel’s Law of Return. That is an increase of nearly 50% compared to the previous year, according to reports. But overall emigration data for 2025 will not be complete for several months.
According to Mr. Dellapergola, the professor emeritus, the prospect of emigration for European Jews comes across one problem that didn’t exist in the 1930s, 1980s and other periods of crisis.
“Where should they go?” Mr. Dellapergola asked. “If I’m a Jew in Rome, should I go to Paris? It’s even worse there. From Paris to Brussels? That’s even worse.
“Do I go to the United States? That’s nearly impossible now because there are very stringent immigration standards. Even if they offer asylum to a few British Jews that is grotesque, because this is a situation that cannot be solved because Uncle Sam offers 25 new immigration permits.
“What about Israel?” the professor asked. “It’s a country at war. Canada or Australia? They are very nice countries, but antisemitism is on the rise everywhere.”
