On the first night of Hanukkah, as the Jewish community gathered on Sydney’s Bondi Beach to celebrate the triumph of light over darkness, two gunmen opened fire, killing 15 people, and leaving dozens injured—in the deadliest attack against Jews since October 7, 2023.

Jesse Emsalem, a member of the Sydney Jewish community, told Israel’s Channel 12, “The overwhelming attitude of Jews I’ve heard from here is that, ‘I’m shocked, I’m not surprised.’
We all saw this coming.”

The attack was the predictable peak of intersecting forces openly acting in Australia—and across the Jewish world—ever since Hamas broke through the fence into Israel over two years ago, and launched a new era of global Jewish vulnerability.

The post-October 7 Jewish reality is playing out like a Rubik’s Cube; six distinct sides, each colored by different primary forces, yet all interconnected and moving together. Solving one side disrupts another. Turning one side shifts the entire cube.

The six fronts include:

• The Changing Global Order—the collapse of the post-World War II liberal power alliance that nourished Global Jewry’s ‘Golden Era.’
• The Erosion of Jewish Status, where being Jewish now comes with an increasingly normalized social, political, and economic cost.
• The Convergence of Modern Antisemitism’s Domains: far-left, far-right, and Islamist movements, once as incompatible as oil and water, now fuel each other around a shared target.
• The Spoiled Zionist Story, in which Israel has transformed from a source of pride and security into one of shame and division.
• Rampant Polarization and Extremism, generating a world powered by social scarcity and competing identity interests.
• And underlying it all, a Trust and Leadership Crisis—no great leader, no great voice is coming to save us with their vision, protection, and direction.

These fronts make up the Global Jewish People’s Rubik’s Cube. In Australia, all six faces twisted together in uninterrupted harmony, leading to the Bondi Beach attack.

For decades, the working assumption among those tracking global Jewish trends was as follows: to see where the Jewish world is headed in 10 years, look to London or San Francisco. To see where it was 10 years ago, look to Australia. Protected........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)