Around the world, anti-Jewish hate is growing. In Bondi, we see the tragic results |
Heaton Park, Boulder, Washington DC – and now Bondi beach. Add the murders of Rabbi Zvi Kogan in the UAE and Ziv Kipper, an Israeli-Canadian businessman, in Egypt, and Jews have been killed on five continents since the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas upended the Middle East and unleashed a wave of antisemitism around the world. Anti-Jewish terrorism is now a global problem, as is the hateful extremism that drives it.
The death toll from the appalling atrocity in Sydney is shocking enough: at the time of writing, 15 people killed, including a child, and many more injured. Awful images circulate, as they always do. The mobile phone footage of two gunmen calmly taking aim at families enjoying a Hanukah party is utterly chilling. It takes a special kind of dehumanisation, an ideology of pure hatred and self-righteous conviction, to do that.
The sheer randomness of these sites of anti-Jewish murder adds to the terror. Places that used to feel like safe, cosy corners of the Jewish world are now suddenly on the frontline. In Manchester, it was the solemn occasion of Yom Kippur that was targeted. In Sydney, it was the happy, lighthearted joy of Hanukah. If you are Jewish today, wherever you are, the decision about whether to celebrate Jewish festivals anywhere other than in your own home may be a matter of life and death.
Nobody should have to live like this. More to the point, our societies cannot continue to function if this becomes the norm. The whole basis of western liberal........