(New York, NY/Berlin, Germany)—The Counter Extremism Project (CEP) today released a new report, Rethinking the Fight against Antisemitism after October 7, arguing that current responses to violence-oriented antisemitic acts remain too incident-led and do not focus sufficiently on the professionalized and organized actors who drive, coordinate, finance, and amplify the most serious threats. The report calls for a shift from incident response to strategic disruption.
The report recommends the creation of a new “violence-oriented antisemitic extremism” (VAE) category to help authorities better identify and disrupt the most dangerous actors.
VAE will improve how authorities tag, prioritize, allocate resources, connect, and escalate cases across intelligence, prevention, prosecution, and policy. The report also calls on governments to focus more explicitly on analyzing and combating organized VAE, including through the use of preventing and countering violent extremism and counterterrorism tools, administrative measures, joint task forces, follow-the-money strategies, and lessons drawn from the fight against organized crime.
Focused on policy implications for the European Union and the United States, the report builds on CEP’s earlier 2025 study on the role of antisemitism in mobilization to violence. Its central argument is that antisemitism is not only a persistent social and political problem, but also a security challenge that is currently not treated with the same analytical clarity or institutional focus as other extremist threat categories.
Additional recommendations include better data collection and analysis, stronger international collaboration, more tailored prevention and education measures, and stricter online content moderation to curb the spread of violence-oriented antisemitism. The report situates these recommendations in the wider post–October 7 threat environment, in which antisemitic incidents and hostile activity have increased across multiple countries while specialized institutional responses remain limited.
Alexander Ritzmann, Senior Advisor at CEP, and author of the report, said: “Responses to antisemitic violence too often remain focused on single incidents rather than on the organized actors and structures behind them. A more effective approach would identify, prioritize, and disrupt the networks, financiers, amplifiers, and coordinators driving the most serious threats.”
Dr Hans-Jakob Schindler, Senior Director at CEP, said: “As long as responses focus on incidents, the groups and networks behind the rise in antisemitic violence will continue to operate. A serious security-focused strategy must prioritize disrupting the actors, financing, and coordination driving these threats.”
To read a copy of CEP’s new report by Alexander Ritzmann, Rethinking the Fight against Antisemitism after October 7, click here
To read CEP’s earlier report on the role of antisemitism in mobilization to violence, click here.
To read CEP’s five-step guide on identifying and disrupting key antisemitic actors, click here.
Contact:
Keith Burnet, Communications Consultant, CEP
[email protected] / +44 7714 200 920