When Jews are attacked, the world is often quick to ask why.

Was it a political grievance? A local dispute? A reaction to events thousands of miles away?

This reflex, to contextualize violence against Jews rather than name it for what it is, has become one of the most dangerous habits of our time.

More troubling still is the failure to name the crime itself.

This is precisely what happened when Oprah Winfrey responded to last week’s massacre on Australia’s Bondi Beach.

Her message of condolence read as if she were describing a natural disaster rather than a planned attack: “I just spent the last two weeks in Australia, walking Bondi just days ago. It’s hard to reconcile that sense of peace with the terror of last night,” she wrote. “My heart breaks for the victims, their families and loved ones, and all you Aussies.”

The omission is striking. There is no mention of Jews. No acknowledgment that this was a targeted act of anti-Jewish violence.

Read this way, Winfrey’s statement echoes an older and far more sinister tradition, one that recalls the Soviet Union’s official response to the 1941 massacre at Babi Yar.

Then, too, the state mourned “peaceful Soviet citizens” while deliberately erasing the fact those murdered were singled out precisely because they were Jewish.

Whether Winfrey’s comments come from deliberate obfuscation is unclear.

Nevertheless, the inability to name the victim and the........

© New York Post