A report published Sunday by the Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel presents an unusually severe picture of anti-LGBTQ hatred in 2025, warning that online abuse is increasingly spilling into public spaces and turning into physical attacks, some of them allegedly carried out by organized groups.
According to the report, at least one physical assault against an LGBTQ person occurs in Israel every week. Physical attacks accounted for half of all reported public-space incidents this year, a sharp rise from 32% in the previous report. Cases of extortion and threats also climbed dramatically, from 3% of reports last year to 13.5% this year.
The most striking figure in the report concerns the extent to which violence has become part of everyday life for many members of the community. In a national survey conducted for the first time as part of the report, 91% of respondents said they had experienced LGBTQ-phobia over the past year, but only 7% said they reported it.
“This figure is a wake-up call,” the report said. “Underreporting stems from exhaustion, the normalization of violence and fear.”
The association’s reporting center documented 322 incidents of LGBTQ-phobic harm this year, along with 110 inquiries to its legal department. The report also recorded more than 2,600 LGBTQ-phobic comments and 1,325 abusive posts on social media.
One of the most troubling sections of the report focuses on what the association describes as a wave of organized attacks against gay men through dating apps, mainly Grindr. Since late 2024, the association said it has documented more than 20 cases in which attackers allegedly created fake profiles, arranged meetings with victims and then ambushed them in groups of five to 10 people, sometimes masked and armed.
“The victims were attacked with brutal violence, most of them requiring medical treatment,” the report said. “The motive was a pure hate crime against men attracted to men.”
The association described the phenomenon as “unprecedented” in Israel.
The report also found that transgender people continued to bear the brunt of anti-LGBTQ harm. People on the trans spectrum accounted for 54% of all reports to the association’s reporting center, despite making up a much smaller share of Israel’s LGBTQ community. According to the report, the trans community experiences the highest levels of violence in almost every sphere of life, including social media, the street, state institutions, the health care system and the education system.
The association linked the trend directly to intensifying public and political discourse around transgender people in Israel and abroad. The report cited, among other examples, public debate surrounding transgender “Big Brother” contestant Alaya Hoff, online attacks against Dana International after she lit an Independence Day torch and an anti-trans bill submitted this year that would prevent a person from legally defining their gender as different from their biological sex at birth.
“The public sphere has become a minefield for the trans community,” the association said.
Tel Aviv-Jaffa accounted for nearly one-fifth of all reports, more than any other region in Israel. The association stressed, however, that this does not necessarily mean LGBTQ-phobia is more prevalent there, noting that the city is home to a large share of the community as well as many services and support networks, which may also contribute to higher reporting rates. Northern Israel and Jerusalem were also cited as areas with particularly high levels of harm.
Nimrod Gorenstein, chair of the Association for LGBTQ Equality in Israel, said the findings show that rising violence and declining personal security in Israeli society are also affecting the LGBTQ community.
“This year’s LGBTQ-phobia report proves that the growing violence and loss of personal security in Israeli society do not spare the LGBTQ community,” he said. “Behind the data are thousands of community members who experienced more violence and discrimination this year solely because of their identity.”