Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu supports a European rollout of a Hungarian-built system that flags antisemitic content online. The surge in Jew hatred “directly affects Israel’s security,” he told a visiting watchdog delegation in Jerusalem last week
Kálmán Szalai, president of Hungary’s Action and Protection Foundation (TEV), briefed Netanyahu on the AI-assisted platform, which identifies antisemitic rhetoric on major social-media networks and refers serious cases to the authorities.
The tool already operates in Germany and Austria, and TEV intends to deploy it in most European Union countries within a year, Szalai said.
Netanyahu welcomed the initiative and urged wider adoption.
“Antisemitic hatred, both online and offline, impacts not only Jewish communities abroad but also Israel’s security,” he said.
TEV’s support programs for victims include legal aid, psychological counseling, and security assistance, Szalai said.
“The drastic rise in hate crimes requires comprehensive institutional protection,” he said.
Education and media literacy also are part of the plan, Szalai said. TEV runs classroom programs that teach students how to spot classic and modern antisemitic tropes, which are often disguised as anti-Zionism, and how to report incidents, he said.
Szalai cited 50 Minutes, a current-affairs program on Neshama TV, a Jewish cable channel in Hungary, as a platform for fact-based coverage and Israeli documentaries.
At the meeting, TEV representatives presented data that indicated steep increases in antisemitism since 2020. In Germany, 1,957 antisemitic incidents in 2020 rose to 4,886 in 2023, while online expressions nearly doubled to 8,627 in 2024, they said. About a quarter of the German cases were categorized as anti-Israel antisemitism, they added.
In the United Kingdom, incidents climbed from 1,662 in 2020 to 4,106 in 2023, a 107% increase, with 1,774 cases linked to Israel and the Gaza conflict, according to TEV.
In Hungary, which Jewish leaders often describe as comparatively safe, online cases of antisemitism increased from 45 in 2022 to 128 in 2023, with most of them after the October 7 massacre, and then jumped to 664 in 2024, with more than half classified as anti-Israel.
The meeting came less than a year after Netanyahu’s state visit to Hungary, where he praised the country as one of the safest for Jews and discussed cooperation with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán.
Szalai, who last met Netanyahu in 2020, said TEV was founded by the Chabad-Lubavitch-affiliated Association of Hungarian Jewish Communities (EMIH) at the initiative of EMIH’s Chief Rabbi Shlomo Köves.
October 7 massacre brought spiking antisemitism from margins to mainstream discourse, public intimidation
The foundation works with the Hungarian government and engages a broad spectrum of Jewish communities, including Reform congregations.
Israeli officials say the spike in antisemitism since the October 7 massacre has moved the problem from the margins into mainstream discourse and street intimidation.
By framing it as a strategic issue and backing the EU expansion of TEV’s monitoring tool, Netanyahu placed countering antisemitism within Israel’s national security agenda and signaled support for exporting practical methods to other democracies.