Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Wednesday, December 17, 2025

Joseph Massad isn't only an antisemite and a liar. He's also a hypocrite.

I showed last month that the philosophical core of anti-Zionism is antisemitism, because anti-Zionists deny Jewish peoplehood and claim that Jews are only members of a religious group. Redefining the Jewish people is itself antisemitic, because it denies Jewish history, especially Jewish history in the Holy Land.

Columbia University professor Joseph Massad is no exception. He claims that Jewish peoplehood was a late 19th century myth, that Jews who lived in Europe are all converts. He clearly believes the discredited Khazar theory although he is careful not to say it explicitly - somehow, magically, hundreds of thousands of European Christians decided to convert to Judaism where they can be treated as Christ-killers without anyone noticing and without anyone writing about it.

Again - a Columbia University professor who will choose any lie, including antisemitic lies, to justify his hate for Israel. Facts are strictly optional for Massad.

Which brings us to his latest column in Arabi21. He says:

When pro-Zionists celebrate Israeli invasions and war crimes and present them as "Jewish" achievements, this position receives applause and encouragement from Israel and its allies.

When do Zionists celebrate war crimes? Tens of thousands of civilians were killed in Gaza because of Hamas policies of using them as human shields - their deaths are not war crimes by any reasonable reading of international law. Geneva Conventions Additional Protocol of 1977: says "The presence or movements of the civilian population or individual civilians shall not be used to render certain points or areas immune from military operations, in particular in attempts to shield military objectives from attacks or to shield, favour or impede military operations."

What Jew, outside some fringe figures on social media, celebrates actual war crimes or civilian deaths? No one. Killing civilians does not help Israel or Judaism in any conceivable way. If Israel could fight a war without any civilian deaths, it would do so, and it spends a huge amount of money to develop weapons that are less likely to cause collateral damage.

But you know who does celebrate the murders of civilians? Joseph Massad!

Within days of October 7, he described the murders and kidnappings of hundred of civilians with these words: "innovative," "astonishing," "astounding," "awesome," "incredible," "remarkable," a "stunning victory of the Palestinian resistance," a "historic event" that was greeted by the Arabs with "jubilation and awe."

Massad even specifically praised Hamas' attacking purely civilian targets, saying "No less astonishing was the Palestinian resistance’s takeover of several Israeli settler-colonies near the Gaza boundary and even as far away as 22 kms, as in the case of Ofakim."

Even he doesn't describe them as military bases - they are civilian communities in Israel itself. Yet Massad justifies their being attacked because he considers all of Israel to be illegal and all Israeli Jews to be legitimate targets.

Yes, that is real antisemitism.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/16 Links Pt2: Cash to Terror: How Humanitarian Aid Funds Extremism; 'Jew hate is brain rot': Erika Kirk vows to confront right-wing antisemitism, Holocaust denial

From Ian:

Lahav Harkov: Fight Larder Review of 'As a Jew' by Sarah Hurwitz

Sarah Hurwitz was treated like a celebrity at the Jewish Federations of North America’s General Assembly in Washington in November, and her remarks connected to her new book, As a Jew: Reclaiming Our Story from Those Who Blame, Shame, and Try to Erase Us, received enthusiastic applause. But it didn’t take long for hostiles—the same blamers, shamers, and erasers of her subtitle—to focus on one moment from her appearance and use it to vilify her. A speechwriter for President Barack Obama before taking on the same role for First Lady Michelle Obama, Hurwitz has since made a second career out of writing about how she has reconnected to her Judaism.

At the General Assembly, she made the point that young people are getting superficial, image-based information from social media about Israel and Gaza, and when she tries to present arguments based on data, they “are hear[d] through this wall of carnage” and they make her “sound obscene.” In remarks at a conference for young Zionists, she was also tagged for saying that pro-Israel arguments are being heard through “a wall of dead children.”

But it was her criticism of the way young Americans are taught about the Holocaust that really gave her critics their opening. Here was Hurwitz: “Holocaust education is absolutely essential, but I think it may be confusing some of our young people about antisemitism, because they learn about big, strong Nazis hurting weak, emaciated Jews, and they think, ‘Oh, antisemitism is like anti-black racism, right? Powerful white people against powerless black people.’ So when on TikTok, all day long, they see powerful Israelis hurting weak, skinny Palestinians, it’s not surprising that they think, ‘Oh, I know the lesson of the Holocaust is you fight Israel. You fight the big, powerful people hurting the weak people.’”

Professional libelers of Israel, such as the radical journalist Spencer Ackerman, claimed Hurwitz was confessing in these words that “Holocaust education has worked too well,” because the lessons it teaches make it harder for her to “rationalize Israel’s genocide.”

In so doing, Ackerman and others were actually validating one of the central themes of As A Jew. In this, her second book, she continues to tell the story of her own journey, which was the subject of her first, Here All Along (2019). Hurwitz explains here that her former identity, based on “cultural/ethnic/social justice/be a good person/Holocaust remembrance,” provided her little more than a superficial and largely unexamined Jewish persona—a persona that, polling indicates, she shares with most American Jews. Hurwitz ruefully describes her younger self’s lack of curiosity about Jewish history or Jewish observance and her rejection of anything that might have made her seem less cool to the non-Jews surrounding her. In this way, she has come to believe, she was internalizing the anti-Semitism that pervades Western culture.

Andrew Fox: Cash to Terror: How Humanitarian Aid Funds Extremism

Humanitarian aid is intended to save lives. But as Cash and Voucher Assistance (CVA) becomes one of the most widely used forms of relief globally, evidence is mounting that in certain conflict zones it is inadvertently fuelling the very forces it seeks to alleviate.

This report examines how CVA – the practice of giving money or vouchers to crisis-affected civilians in place of in-kind aid – operates in contexts where armed groups like Hamas, the Houthis, and Boko Haram exert significant control over markets, financial networks, and supply chains. By analysing documented case studies from Gaza, Yemen, northeast Nigeria and Sudan, we identify predictable mechanisms through which cash aid slides into extremist-linked economic systems.

Our findings are clear: when a marketplace, banking or money-changing system is under the control or influence of armed groups – even ones not designated as terrorist actors by the UN – cash transfers become predictable sources of revenue for those actors. In Gaza, money-changer “fees” of 20 – 40 per cent are common; in Yemen, at least $161 million in cash aid flowed into Houthi-held territory in 2024, and UN agencies have documented widespread diversion; in Nigeria, militants impose levies on traders and transport networks that capture value from aid transactions.

In response, this report outlines a set of policy recommendations designed to improve transparency, tighten oversight, and better mitigate the risk that humanitarian cash assistance will be co-opted by violent actors, while still preserving the capacity of aid agencies to deliver life-saving support.

READ THE FULL REPORT HERE.(PDF)

Oxfam chief criticised government for arming Ukraine and 'tried to rewrite charity's position on Gaza' before being ousted from £130k-a-year job amid 'bullying' claims

The £130,000-a-year ousted Oxfam boss criticised the Government for arming Ukraine and risked putting charity staff in danger in Gaza, an internal investigation said.

Dr Halima Begum's role as chief executive was declared 'untenable' by Oxfam's board of trustees over the weekend following an 'irretrievable breakdown in its trust and confidence' about her ability to do the job.

It came after 70 members of staff signed a letter calling for an investigation into her conduct which centred around allegations of bullying staff and creating a climate of fear.

But an extraordinary row has broken out at Oxfam over the treatment of its outgoing boss, with allies claiming she has been unfairly kicked out.

Last night, Dr Begum's lawyers confirmed she would be taking legal action against Oxfam for 'defamatory and unfounded criticism of her' that she described as 'hatemongering and stigmatisation'.

The report flagged public comments made by Dr Begum in which she accused the UK of 'taking sides' in the Ukraine war, which allegedly led to complaints and the withdrawal of donations.

During an appearance on BBC Radio 4 show Any Questions in November last year, she criticised the West for supplying Kyiv with long-range missiles and anti-personnel landmines, describing it as a 'retrograde step'.

'It definitely feels like a reincarnation of the Cold War - us taking sides as opposed to thinking what is necessary in order to build a just international security system that all nations could rely on,' she said. 'The stakes are so high not only for Ukrainian civilians dying but also Russian soldiers dying.'

Her remarks sparked a major backlash, with a surge in complaints and donor withdrawals, The Times reports.

The report also alleged that Dr Begum attempted to rewrite Oxfam's politically neutral public messaging on the war in Gaza. Staff claimed she was not careful enough in considering the safety of staff in Gaza when she publicly called for the UK to stop arming Israel, for example.

Staff are said to have complained that her changes exposed them to potential retaliation in an environment which was already volatile amid the Israel-Hamas war.

12/16 Links Pt1: BHL: The intifada has been globalised; The West’s deflections over Bondi are obscene; Hero couple who died trying to stop Bondi terrorist

From Ian:

Bernard-Henri Lévy: The intifada has been globalised

I know one must arm oneself with prudence before establishing a causal link between words and crimes. And I know the danger of this slope, of this moral butterfly effect, and of the temptation to transform speech into culpability and to equate a call to murder with the act itself. But I also remember Primo Levi’s lesson in The Drowned and the Saved, reminding us that massacres never begin with weapons but with words.

I recall Victor Klemperer, the philologist who analysed the corruption of the German language by Nazism in The Language of the Third Reich, stating that “words can be like tiny doses of arsenic”.

Or quite simply Jean-Paul Sartre, whose famous phrase seems to me rarely as apt: words are “loaded pistols”.

And that is why, in sadness and anger, but without polemical spirit, I invite all those who, two years later, continue to believe that one can play with words of Jew-hatred and pogrom without consequence to an examination of conscience.

For what happened in Sydney is not an accident but a sign. Given that the same causes risk producing the same effects, it could happen tomorrow in New York, London, Rome, Madrid, or Paris. In truth, it could happen in any city in the world where one is still frivolous enough to believe that words are just words, that slogans bind only those who chant them, and that hatred – when draped in the supposed love of an oppressed people – can be absolved of its consequences.

This is not about giving in to panic nor concluding that we face an irresistible wave like those at the most tragic hours of Western history.

But if keeping one’s cool is a virtue, turning away can be a crime – and wisdom demands acknowledging that there are moments when History gives warning.

Sydney is one of them. But one must still hear, see what is being said, and act accordingly.

Brendan O'Neill: The hatred for the Jewish State is endangering the Jewish people

We’re talking about the reanimation of medieval tropes in the drag of ‘anti-Zionism’. We’re talking about the Jewish State being accused of lusting after the blood of innocents, just as the Jews once were. We’re talking about the Jewish nation being branded the puppet-master of world affairs, just as the Jews once were. We’re talking about the Jewish homeland being reimagined as the poison in the well of humanity, just as the Jews once were. Criticising Israel? Go for it. Spending your every waking hour telling the world Israel is a diabolical entity that relishes in the destruction of the sinless? Not on my watch.

As Dave Rich has argued, it shouldn’t surprise us one bit that ‘a protest movement that treats the world’s only Jewish State as a transgressor of all moral and human norms’ is helping to embolden lowlifes who just ‘do not like Jews’. How telling that the faux-progressive elites see ‘incitement’ everywhere except in their own daily hate missives against the Jewish State that have so many echoes of the ancient dread of the Jewish people. Call a ‘transwoman’ a man and they’ll have you up for hate speech. Call for the annihilation of the Jewish State and they’ll hug you.

If this high-status invective for the Jewish State and its allegedly immoral populace had exploded a few years back, it might have been manageable. It would still have required the firmest of pushbacks, but it might not have proven so existentially menacing. Today is different, though. Now the chattering classes’ mandatory abhorrence for the Jewish nation mingles with other catastrophic trends to create a moment of very clear danger for both the Jews and civilisation itself.

There are our porous borders, the flat-out refusal of those who rule over us to police our frontiers against people from profoundly anti-Semitic cultures. There is the emboldening of Islamists. We’ve seen them on those hate marches, walking alongside middle-aged Guardianistas in Vinted pashmimas, hollering for the return of the Army of Muhammad to kill all the Jews. And there is the authoritarian clampdown on open discussion of the Islamist threat. Raise concerns about the violent-minded Jew-haters in Islamist circles and you’ll be branded an ‘Islamophobe’. Our thoughts are policed better than our borders.

It is the crashing together of these two things – the modish loathing for Israel and the swelling of the Islamist menace – that has birthed this lethal moment. To defame Israel as uniquely barbarous would be bad at the best of times. To do it when we know very well there are bellicose Islamists in our midst is reckless in the extreme. Elite Israelophobia is like a red rag to murderous anti-Semitism. The Bondi pogrom is devastating proof of this – two ISIS worshippers carrying out a murderous assault on Jews following 26 months of non-stop Jewish State demonisation in Oz and across the West.

After Bondi, we have to ask – has anti-Semitism now been superseded by anti-Israel sentiment? Is the hatred for Israel not simply the witless inflamer of anti-Semitic thinking but the very form that anti-Semitism now takes? As the Australian’s Yoni Bashan reminded us this week, anti-Semitism ‘never goose-steps into the ball dressed as anti-Semitism. It doesn’t wear a sign. It arrives in the costume of the moment. As nationalism. As anti-capitalism. As social justice.’ And today as ‘criticism of Israel’. As 2025 comes to a close, one question matters above all others: are you on the side of the Jews or are you not? Their safety and our civilisation depend on how we answer.

Seth Mandel: Mass Murderers Don’t Care How Jews Feel

Mostly solid statement but there is no confusion over the “intent” of someone who uses the phrase. Bondi Beach is the intent.

Of course, the candidates who are willing to at least consider the implications of the phrase are handling this better than those who stick their fingers in their ears. Several candidates simply declined to answer the question at all.

As did Zohran Mamdani. The article notes that Rabbi Ammiel Hirsch told the incoming mayor, who pointedly refuses to condemn the call for mass murder, that “anti-Zionist rhetoric” can threaten the safety of Jews in New York. When asked by CBS to respond, Mamdani said: “Rabbi Hirsch is entitled to his opinions.”

It’s just a gentlemen’s disagreement over whether incitement to violence is good or bad, you see.

Anti-Zionism is the defining organizing principle of Mamdani’s adult life, so he knows exactly what the phrase means, perhaps better than most. There is no one in the universe less deserving of the benefit of the doubt on this than Zohran Mamdani.

The focus of the Jewish community going forward must be to stop with the rhetoric about how incitement makes us feel, because the Mamdanis of the world—and they are legion—will exploit any cracks in the consensus. And that only enables the terrorists who, I assure you, aren’t thinking about anybody’s feelings. No more handing excuses to those who openly seek our harm.

Seth Mandel: Jews Are Fed Up

The pattern is a familiar one. A terrible anti-Semitic attack will take place; political leaders will say “this is not who we are” and vow to take action; no one takes any meaningful action; another anti-Semitic attack takes place.

Lather, rinse, repeat.

So in the wake of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre, it would be prudent to make it as difficult as possible for Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to forget about his responsibility to act. And there’s no more powerful way to do that than to amplify the voices of the survivors. This will hopefully have the added effect of reminding Western politicians across the spectrum that they, too, are under the lights.

Here’s Victoria Teplitsky describing her father, who was wounded at Bondi Beach: “He’s 86, he’s a Holocaust survivor, he’s a survivor of anti-Semitism in the ex-Soviet Union. He grew up tough, my dad. And he came to Australia, he brought us here because he didn’t want my brother and I to go through the same experience. And we didn’t for many years. We didn’t for many years. Until October 7, 2023.”

Let’s pause here to note that Australia is home to the highest concentration of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel—and that another of those Holocaust survivors was killed on Bondi Beach while shielding his wife from the haze of bullets. I have to admit I get angry anew every time I hear of another Jew who survived Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union but not the United States or Australia. It is an anger I believe every Jew shares.

Back to the interview. The anchors from Australia’s ABC—this is an important piece of information for later in the interview—asked Teplitsky how she’s feeling about everything. Teplitsky responded with a message for Albanese and the political establishment:

“Is this what you wanted? Is this enough now? Will you listen to us? Albanese, [Labour parliamentary leader Penny] Wong, will you listen to us? Will you actually do something? Will you actually—no, you don’t have to stand up and say anything because we don’t believe you anyway.”

She then looked the ABC anchors in the face and said: “And ABC, I’ve got to say, will you cut out the biased reporting? Will you cut it out, will you actually let us have a voice?” Teplitsky then starts to explain the role of the media in making Jews feel like outsiders but abruptly changes direction, making a moving statement that one increasingly hears among the Jews of the Diaspora. She is not a religious woman, Teplitsky says, but “since October 7, since all the hatred that’s been thrown at us, I started to wear my Magen David because I’m Jewish, and if you have something to say, you can say it to me. And ABC, please stop with the biased reporting.”

On CBS, Tony Dokoupil talked to a couple who were briefly separated from their child at Bondi Beach, Wayne and Vanessa Miller. Vanessa said she questioned whether the event was safe at the outset because of the low police presence. Referring to Albanese, Vanessa said, “He’s got blood on his hands, and he knows it.” Wayne added: “The acts of terrorism have been rewarded by the Australian weak government.”

(This Chanukah thought is heavily based on my work on extracting Jewish wisdom for today's world, which I am calling Derechology.)

The Chanukah menorah is not only a lesson in the miracle of the oil. It is a lesson about how the world should be.

Greek philosophy, from which all Western philosophy is based, treats light as the primary metaphor for good and truth: knowledge is illumination, ignorance is darkness, and once truth is fully seen, order is expected to follow naturally.

Judaism approaches light very differently.

The Chanukah lights are not one large torch, but multiple distinct flames. This mirrors Creation itself: the first thing God did after creating light was to separate it from darkness. Light alone was not enough. God imposed structure around it.

Greek “holiness” (aretē, excellence) is about perfection, maximization, and the fullest realization of an essence.

Jewish kedushah is fundamentally different. As Rashi defines it, kedushah means separation - and as Ramban explains, restraint even within what is permitted.

Greek ethics seeks the fullest expression of capacity. Jewish ethics sanctifies the withholding of capacity.

This difference becomes concrete in halacha. According to Jewish law, the lights of the menorah may not be used for any purpose other than to be seen. Each flame has its own role. Using them instrumentally invalidates the mitzvah. When they are used only for the mitzvah and nothing else, they are holy - kodesh heim.

Kedushah means that things belong in proper categories and roles - sacred and mundane, human and animal, child and adult, man and woman, obligation and permission. Moral societies depend on such distinctions not to flatten human beings, but to assign responsibility, limits, and purpose.

Chanukah makes this unavoidable. The light is there, yet we are forbidden to use it.

Greek philosophy assumes that absolute knowledge is attainable through reason alone. Jewish thinking holds that only God knows the full truth, and that human beings approach truth not through certainty, but through structure. The menorah has precise placement, strict order, defined timing, and limitations of use. It must be lit whether or not we grasp all of its history and symbolism. Actions and responsibilities are not dependent on complete understanding.

This rule is what makes morality possible. If moral action depended on full understanding, then anything could be justified once the story was told persuasively enough. We see that failure of morality everywhere today.

Structure is what prevents entropy - and creating structure is how human beings imitate God, who created a bounded universe out of nothing so that we could complete His work by building moral order within it.

That is the Jewish answer to Athens.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Here is the abstract of a paper released last week in Settler Colonialist Studies:

Sacrificing Indigenous interests: solving the ‘native question’ in Australia and Palestine on the eve of the Second World War
Alison Holland
Received 19 Jun 2024, Accepted 19 Nov 2025, Published online: 05 Dec 2025
Cite this article https://doi.org/10.1080/2201473X.2025.2594550

ABSTRACT
In 1937 administrators in Australia pronounced the fate of Aboriginal Australians as their eventual elimination, either through biological absorption or natural death. Historians have discussed this moment primarily through the prism of genocide. In this article I widen the interpretive lens to compare it to the contemporaneous resolution to eliminate Indigenous peoples from Palestine by British administrators. I show how the 1937 Aboriginal welfare conference and the 1937 Peel Commission on Palestine were symptomatic of an imperial humanitarian turn when the ‘native question’ was raised as an international concern for the first time. Widely understood to have been a failure, this humanitarian moment simultaneously recognised ‘native’ interests and retreated from (sacrificed) them. The outcomes for Indigenous people in Australia and Palestine bear this out and demonstrate how solutions about racialized ‘others’ that were playing out across Europe were refracted in policies targeting Indigenous peoples around the colonial periphery. The comparative frame places Australian developments in global context and draws out the settler colonial imperatives at work. Despite their differences the comparison highlights the salience of the structural effects of settler colonialism. It suggests that this moment was foundational, when the twentieth century settler colonial logic of elimination was set in train in both sites.

The Australian 1937 Initial Conference of Commonwealth and State Aboriginal Authorities recommended - and implemented - a policy of removing light-skinned indigenous children from their families to be raised in white orphanages or by white families to eventually eliminate all aboriginal peoples from Australia.

Was the Peel Commission of 1937 "eliminationist"? No, it recommended voluntary transfer of Arabs from the tiny area of the proposed Jewish state.

The comparison is obscene. But if you accept the logic of forcing everything into a settler-colonialist frame, then what is genocidal in one must be genocidal in the other. If Patrick Wolfe declares that settler colonialism is a process meant to eliminate the native, then you cannot argue that any policy that is not eliminationist is not eliminationist.

This is dogma, not scholarship.

But as is often the case, there is context that is utterly missing from Ms. Holland's zeal to place her own twisted morals front and center.

The Peel Commission explicitly noted the 'pressure of Jewish immigration from Europe' due to persecution. Alison Holland mentions Europe exactly once - in a footnote about racial policies - and never once says the word 'Jew' in the context of refugees fleeing murder.

This was 1937. The Jews of Europe were already aware of the looming danger to them. Many desperately wanted to save their lives by fleeing to their historic, ancestral homeland. And to "scholars" like Alison Holland, saving the lives of millions of Jews doesn't enter into her already twisted moral equation where the false concept of settler colonialism is considered worse than industrialized murder.

She is so anxious to equate an actual impulse to genocide in Australia with Palestine because in today's twisted culture, Palestine has replaced Nazi Germany as the paradigm of evil. The idea that she is tacitly supporting Hitler's goals of wiping out Jews from Europe doesn't even enter her woke mind.

To be blunt - how can anyone discuss British policy in Palestine in 1937 without mentioning that this policy doomed hundreds of thousands of people?

If you consider Zionism to be unparalleled evil, then the death of millions of Jews pales in comparison with a voluntary transfer plan of Arabs.

The idea of "settler colonialism" has gone beyond scholarship into cult status, with its own foundational scriptures that cannot be questioned, and mere facts or human lives no longer matter.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The far-Left site The Grayzone decided that mainstreaming Hamas is a perfectly normal thing to do. After all, Israel is definitionally evil, but Hamas is a reasonable, moral liberation movement.

So their reporter Aaron Maté went to Doha to interview Dr. Nassem Naim, a former Hamas health minister who has repeatedly denied that Hamas killed any civilians on October 7 2023.

Unprompted, Naim said (28:03) , "October 7th it was an act of defense against occupation, against siege."

He then added that it was also an act against the Palestinian Authority, saying "It was a response to a case of negligence of the Palestinians and try to avoid or to push down or back the Palestinian question."

Maté, of course, doesn't push back on any of this, because Naim is saying what the antisemites desperately want him to say, as a doctor wearing a suit cannot possibly be a lying apologist for rape and murder.

One of the leaders of the "Free Gaza" movement, Paul Larudee, promoted this video this way to his email list:

I met Dr. Naim in Gaza, and also Dr. Mahmoud Nahhar, and Ismail Haniya, then Prime Minister, who took us to his humble home in the al-Shati refugee camp and where he provided dinner for us in the only open area in the camp. He was assassinated in Tehran by Israeli operatives. I later met Osama Hamdan, the Hamas representative in Lebanon, on two occasions. They and other Hamas leaders sound much like Dr. Naim.

Reasonable, approachable, kind and generous. That's my experience with the people of Hamas.

Antisemitism is so ingrained in much of the world that not only must Israel be unparalleled in evil, but Hamas must be the good guys.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/15 Links Pt2: The Palestine Firsters; How Antisemitism Is Entering Mainstream Culture; Radical Anti-Israel Group Planned To Bomb Los Angeles Buildings

From Ian:

Eli Lake: The Palestine Firsters

What Rhodes and Carlson either fail to understand or deliberately overlook is that the Palestinian national movement itself has not really changed in the past century. Despite the hope generated among some by the Oslo Accords in 1993, PLO chieftain Yasir Arafat responded to the explicit offer of statehood in 2000 with a five-year intifada that brought waves of suicide bombers to Israeli schools, markets, and synagogues. Now the youth wing of the Palestine Firsters who disrupted the comings and goings of Jewish students on campus and are seeking to prevent Jews from entering synagogues in New York and Los Angeles (for a start) want to “globalize the intifada.” Indeed, a few radicals already have, with gruesome consequences, like the murder of two young people outside a Jewish event in Washington, D.C., in May 2025.

The obstacle to Palestinian statehood has always been that Palestinians believe that their state cannot exist unless the Jewish state is negated. How is it in America’s interest to advance that delusion?

What Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu have learned is that the rest of the region is no longer willing to allow the failures of Palestinian leaders to hinder the pursuit of their own national interest in normalizing ties with Israel. That was the main takeaway of the Abraham Accords, the 2020 agreements brokered by President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, which forged diplomatic relations between Israel and four Arab states.

For Rhodes, these peace agreements were themselves a failure. “After Mr. Trump abandoned the Oslo consensus and moved the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, Mr. Netanyahu and AIPAC showered him with adulation,” he writes. “Yet when Mr. Trump rolled out the Abraham Accords normalizing relations between Israel and some autocratic Arab states, many Democrats credulously heralded it as a ‘peace’ agreement even though it didn’t end any wars and it sidelined the Palestinians.”

That rendering of recent history is preposterous. The decision of Bahrain, Morocco, Sudan, and the United Arab Emirates to recognize Israel came three years after Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved our embassy there. The Oslo consensus was wrong. America’s Arab allies once held U.S. foreign policy hostage by demanding the creation of a Palestinian state. But the Arab regimes have evolved.

Meanwhile, the Palestine Firsters are actively seeking to shift American policy in the Middle East in the opposite direction. They want to turn America against Israel just at the moment when Arab states have been engaged in an unambiguously positive turn toward the West—which involves bringing to an end the Arab world’s destructive and pointless eight-decade commitment to seek Israel’s destruction. The Palestine Firsters want the United States to pick up that diseased baton and wreck an alliance that has advanced the national interest for decades.

Primed To Lead Israel

REVIEW: ‘A Call at 4 AM: Thirteen Prime Ministers and the Crucial Decisions that Shaped Israeli Politics’ by Amit Segal
"In Israel, in order to be a realist, you must believe in miracles," Israel’s first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, once quipped.

At some point later in his career, perhaps he muttered to himself, "In order to survive a full term as prime minister, you need way more than the ability to split a sea and have God give you two inscribed tablets on a mountaintop."

We’ll never know.

But as Amit Segal’s A Call at 4 AM: Thirteen Prime Ministers and the Crucial Decisions That Shaped Israeli Politics demonstrates, one seems to need divine intervention to survive years at the head of the world’s only Jewish state and emerge unscathed by public opinion, war, or scandal.

That, ironically, is partially the fault of Ben-Gurion himself. As Segal, one of Israel’s most renowned journalists, documents in his riveting political history, the country since its inception has had to operate by the seat of its sand-swept pants. Besieged by Arab countries seeking its destruction from the day of its birth, and already welcoming Jews from all over the world (including thousands forced to flee from those same Arab countries), the Israeli leader channeled the ancient Jewish habit of free debate, honed over centuries in the beit midrash (house of study). "In the absence of a democratic tradition and under the specter of a deadly national conflict," Segal writes, "there was a genuine fear that any minority who felt unrepresented would try to storm the parliament building with tanks."

Israel’s notoriously complex coalition-based parliament, the Knesset, has proved more stable than originally expected. Its model, despite its seemingly ever-dramatic daily headlines, stands head and shoulders above its neighbors. No doubt millions of viewers in Israel and America chuckled when President Donald Trump got up to deliver his remarks celebrating the successful release of the remaining living hostages taken by Hamas, following Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s opening address and remarks from the Knesset's speaker, only to have POTUS realize it wasn’t his turn yet because the leader of the opposition to the ruling coalition, Yair Lapid, had his turn to speak first.

"Even on the Knesset's stormiest days," Segal notes with characteristic humor and insight, "it is worth remembering that the opposition leader in Egypt is in jail, the opposition leader in Syria drives around in an armored personnel carrier, the opposition leader in Lebanon lies six feet under, and the opposition leader in Israel meets the prime minister once a month for a friendly conversation over coffee and bagels."

Michal Cotler-Wunsh and Nadav Steinman: How Antisemitism Is Entering Mainstream Culture

For decades, efforts to demonize, delegitimize and apply double standards to Israel, and implicitly justifying violence against Jews, occurred mostly in academic institutions, fringe activist movements and international forums. But lately, these ideas have migrated into mainstream public life in the West - into sports stadiums, concert halls, music festivals, and entertainment platforms. Demonizing and otherwise targeting Jews and the Jewish state, once the realm of UN resolutions or academic debates, have now become commonplace in mainstream forums.

The working definition of antisemitism by the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA), adopted by more than 40 countries including the U.S., Germany, France and Britain, explicitly identifies as antisemitic the denial of Jewish self-determination and the application of double standards to Israel. Today's virulent anti-Zionism, masquerading as criticism of the Israeli government, has stoked Jew-hatred and helped unleash and normalize it in the public square.

Israel, the Jew among nations, is uniquely targeted for bans from cultural events, Israeli artists and athletes are singled out, Jewish visibility is increasingly framed as provocation, and convicted terrorists are recast as political prisoners. The letter signed by 200 celebrities calling for the release of convicted Palestinian terrorist Marwan Barghouti reflects an environment where violence against Israelis is romanticized, and anti-Zionism is presented as a moral duty, couched in the language of human rights.

The normalization of antisemitism creates the conditions for hate that does not stop with Jews, because it's never about Jews alone. What is being mainstreamed is a thuggish sensibility in which any targeted group can be demonized. The deeper threat from rising antisemitism is the general erosion of fundamental principles of life and liberty. The Barghouti letter shows not just the moral lapse of celebrities. It is a siren warning of a fire that isn't even close to being extinguished.

12/15 Links Pt1: Holocaust survivors and children among the 15 murdered; The Road to Bondi Beach; Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like; Bondi Beach hero told cousin 'I'm going to die'

From Ian:

Bret Stephens: Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like

Sadly for Australia, foreign actors alone aren’t the problem. Last year, Jillian Segal, the government’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, warned that “antisemitic behavior is not only present on many campuses, but is an embedded part of the culture.” In the wake of Hamas’s attack of Oct. 7, Greens legislator Jenny Leong went on a rant accusing “the tentacles” of the “Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby” of “infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups.” Jewish homes, neighborhoods and a day care center have been targeted by vandals and arsonists. At least one of the alleged shooters in Sunday’s attack was known to authorities, “but not in an immediate threat perspective,” according to a top Australian intelligence official.

I heard an earful of alarm from Jewish communal leaders when I last visited Australia in June 2024, but nothing seemed to change. On Sunday, the Australian Jewish Association posted a message to Facebook: “How many times did we warn the government? We never felt once that they listened.”

They are probably listening now. But the problem for the Albanese government, which in September recognized a Palestinian state and has been outspoken in its condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza, is that the moral line between the routine demonization of Israel and attacks on Jews who are presumed to support Israel isn’t necessarily clear. On Sunday, Albanese said that “the evil that was unleashed at Bondi Beach today is beyond comprehension.” In fact, it’s entirely comprehensible. For fanatics who have been led to believe that the Jewish state is the apotheosis of evil, killing Jews represents a twisted notion of justice. Even when the victims are unarmed civilians. Even when they are celebrating an ancient, joyful holiday.

There’s a larger lesson here that goes far beyond Australia.

Though we’ll probably learn more in the weeks ahead about the mind-set of Sunday’s killers, it’s reasonable to surmise that what they thought they were doing was “globalizing the intifada.” That is, they were taking to heart slogans like “resistance is justified,” and “by any means necessary,” which have become ubiquitous at anti-Israel rallies the world over. For many of those who chant those lines, they may seem like abstractions and metaphors, a political attitude in favor of Palestinian freedom rather than a call to kill their presumptive oppressors.

But there are always literalists — and it’s the literalists who usually believe their ideas should have real-world consequences. On Sunday, those consequences were written in Jewish blood. History tells us that it won’t be the last time.

The People of Forever Are Not Afraid

We’ll mourn the dead, we’ll comfort the afflicted, we’ll carry on. It’s been millennia now; we’ve gotten good at it. And we’ll continue to grow stronger because we draw our courage and our resolve from that ancient covenant that charges us, always and forever, to spread God’s light and love to a benighted, blood-soaked world. Our great prophet Micah captured the mission statement perfectly long ago: “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it.”

And yet, in each generation, some clearly fail to get the memo, believing instead that it’s possible to make them—us, the Jews, and with us, the entire world—afraid by means of brute force. How does that work out? A brief history lesson tells the story.

Rome, the former empire that showed us no mercy, is now a sweaty, smoggy city depending on tourist dollars to survive.

Spain, birthplace of the Inquisition, has let in some 600,000 migrants a year since 2022 and now faces the highest unemployment rate on the continent.

England, having been the first to expel the Jews in 1290, now arrests people for making true statements on social media while turning a blind eye to the mass rape of its own daughters by gangs of vicious migrants slowly devouring the country.

France, Germany, Canada, Australia—it’s the same story everywhere you look. A West too weak to define, let alone defend, its own values, and hordes of marauders settling in and reshaping the culture in their violent, hateful image.

So don’t worry about us. Worry about Sydney, Toronto, Paris, and the other former capitals of culture and innovation that are now drowned by waves of angry savages cheering on murder and sowing chaos and violence. Worry about the kind folks in Germany who let in hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the name of multicultural benevolence, only to be told that they may no longer enjoy their Christmas markets because their new neighbors may feel inclined to blow them up, shoot them up, or ram them with cars. Worry about the politicians who continue to take suicidal symbolic steps, like recognizing “Palestine” or prattling on about “Islamophobia,” even as they drain their nations of their freedoms and securities.

Almost immediately after the shooting in Sydney, some on social media took to sharing the famous photograph of a menorah in a window in Kiel, Germany, in 1931, with the Nazi flag hanging from the facade of the party’s regional headquarters across the street. The photo is indeed worth a thousand words: Hanukkah has never been a holiday of passive faith. It commemorates a moment when Jews refused to surrender their identity to those who demanded conformity. Hanukkah teaches that Jewish survival is not rooted in denial of danger, but in the courage to affirm who we are anyway.

Nearly a century later, we still light menorahs with joy and conviction, whereas the Nazi flag and those who believed in it are all gone. Nearly a century later, the Jewish state leads the way in everything from innovation to birthrates to happiness, while the birthplace of Goethe and Schiller finds its fertility in free fall, its politics in turmoil, and its future darkened by violent invaders who despise its culture and show it no fealty or gratitude.

Today’s Nazis will soon meet a similarly grim ending, their green-red-white-and-black flag tossed to the same dustbin of history as the swastika. Let the savages ululate their blood libels as they always have. Let them accuse the Jews of whatever they want. The people of forever aren’t afraid.

JPost Editorial: Bondi attack exposes Australia’s failure to confront rising antisemitism

Coordinated, ideologically driven violence
Even more disturbing was what lay behind some of these attacks. Australian intelligence has concluded that Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was behind at least two antisemitic arson attacks on Jewish sites in Melbourne and Sydney, prompting Canberra to expel Iranian diplomats, suspend its embassy operations in Tehran, and move toward designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization. This is not spontaneous hatred. It is coordinated, ideologically driven violence.

At the same time, the Mossad warned Australian authorities of the risk of an antisemitic terrorist attack against the Jewish community. A Post staff report, citing Israeli and Australian media, revealed that the Mossad sent messages about possible threats, even as the local police commissioner insisted there had been no specific intelligence before the Bondi Beach massacre.

That gap, if confirmed, points to a devastating breakdown between the warning system and the political and policing response.

The human cost is already visible. We reported that Arsen Ostrovsky, a Post contributor and pro-Israel human-rights lawyer, was among those wounded at Bondi Beach.

Just two weeks earlier, Ostrovsky had warned of “an alarming surge in Jew-hatred since October 7, including the defilement of Australian landmarks being hijacked as platforms for intimidation.” His wounds at a Hanukkah celebration are a brutal illustration of how quickly rhetoric turns into bullets.

Australia’s experience is part of a broader and troubling global pattern. Across Western democracies, antisemitism has surged alongside a wider resurgence of ideological extremism. Jewish communities are often the first targets, but history shows they are never the last.

Lone actors, radicalized networks, and transnational ideologies do not respect borders, and they thrive where political leadership hesitates to name the problem clearly or act decisively.

Australian authorities have taken steps in response: arrests, investigations, new databases, and task forces. Yet the overall response has too often felt reactive, fragmented, and cautious. Security cannot be reduced to policing after the fact. It requires political clarity, legal frameworks that recognize modern threats, and sustained coordination between intelligence services, law enforcement, and vulnerable communities.

Standing with Australia’s Jewish community is not a matter of symbolism or special pleading. It is a test of whether the state can protect a minority when it is under sustained attack, and whether it understands that doing so strengthens democracy for everyone. Jewish Australians should not have to choose between visibility and safety, or between practicing their faith and trusting their government.

If Australia fails to act decisively now, not just for Jews but for all communities, it will not be because the threat was unforeseeable. The Post’s own reporting throughout the past two years has chronicled the warning signs. Those warnings were ignored, and responsibility was deferred. That is a failure no democracy can afford.

Antisemitism report, November 22, 1923

From the Jewish Press, Omaha, NE, November 22, 1923 front page.

Jews protested Boston honoring an antisemitic, murderous Polish general - and the mainstream Boston Transcript newspaper responded by saying the "ungrateful" Jews should be deported:

A pre-Nazi pogrom against the Jews of Berlin:

Jews were also attacked for being against Bible lessons in public schools.

And the Jewish establishment decried antisemitism.

Things don't look that much different today.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

The murderous Chanukah attack at Bondi Beach should not have happened.

That statement is not merely moral. It is philosophical.

One of the dominant assumptions of modern Western thought is that history is moving, more or less inevitably, toward justice, tolerance, and moral enlightenment. Under that framework, acts of naked antisemitic violence are predicted to be fading into irrelevance. They are relics of a less educated, less inclusive, less enlightened past. When they occur at all, they are assumed to be marginal, residual, or explicable as temporary aberrations.

Bondi Beach is therefore not just a tragedy. It is a refutation of a specific belief: that history itself is doing the moral work for us.

This belief has become accepted as fact in the Western world. And that is dangerous.

Secular Teleology

Teleology is the belief that history has an inherent direction and an endpoint: that events are not merely unfolding, but unfolding toward something. In religious traditions, that “something” is redemption, salvation, or divine judgment. In modern secular thought, God is removed, but the structure remains.

Beginning in the Enlightenment, a range of philosophers secularized this idea. History was no longer guided by divine will but by impersonal forces: reason, science, economic laws, technological development, or moral awakening. The destination remained moral improvement; only the engine changed.

This secular teleology appears in multiple modern forms. In Marxism, history inevitably culminates in a classless society. With scientific or technocratic optimism, knowledge and innovation will dissolve moral conflict. Progressivism says social norms converge toward justice over time. Decolonial and liberation frameworks claim historical forces guarantee emancipation.

What these systems share is not policy content, but structure: history is treated as a moral agent, and the future as a validator of truth.

What is striking about secular teleology is not that it hopes for progress, but that it asserts inevitability. There is no historical law demonstrating that societies must become more just. There is no empirical data showing that hatred naturally declines with education (recent studies show the opposite.) We have no scientific principle proving or even suggesting that moral norms converge over time rather than fracture, mutate, or regress.

None of this is to deny that many things are better today than in the past. Local improvements exist. Institutional reforms can work. But inevitability is a faith claim, not a finding. It is asserted, not demonstrated. Once inevitability is assumed, evidence no longer tests the theory; it is absorbed by it.

Despite its lack of necessity, secular teleology has become ambient in modern Western thinking.

We speak casually about “the right side of history.” We assume that moral disagreement is generational rather than substantive. We expect that today’s taboos will expand tomorrow, and that yesterday’s hatreds cannot seriously return. We have inherited a narrative - in education, in media, in political speech - that simply has no factual basis.

It is a narrative about how time works. And time doesn't really care about inevitable social justice.

Backlash: The Non-Falsifiable Escape Hatch

Every dogma must contend with counterexamples. Secular teleology does so through the concept of backlash.

Backlash is presented as an explanation for regression: when hatred or violence increases, it is framed not as evidence against progress, but as proof that progress is succeeding and provoking resistance.

This logic allows even extreme historical regressions, including Nazi Germany, to be interpreted not as refutations, but as temporary backlashes against inevitable progress. This idea can even explain how the most modern, industrialized, culturally mature nation can choose genocide as its most important task. It is not viewed as a refutation but an inevitable temporary backlash against inevitable progress.

When a theory claims to explain all evidence and counter-evidence as proof, the theory becomes non-falsifiable. If bigotry declines, progress is working - and if bigotry increases, backlash also proves progress is working.

No possible outcome can count as disproof. At this point, secular teleology quietly shifts its theory of truth.

It pretends to embrace scientific thinking, but instead of correspondence theory used by science, it relies on coherence theory: only accepting new facts can be fitted into the existing narrative.

This is why regression is reinterpreted rather than confronted, and why warning signs are treated as misreadings rather than data.

Teleological Secularism as Religion Without God

Once history itself is sacralized, secular teleologies take on all the functional features of religion. They have an eschatology (“the arc of history”). a moral hierarchy (progressive vs. regressive), a theodicy (backlash), heresy (questioning inevitability), and even clerisy (authorized moral interpreters like academia.)

God is absent, but destiny remains. Redemption is promised, but vigilance is dismissed.

This causes major problems. A worldview that assumes history will take care of injustice becomes complacent in the face of threats that do not obey its narrative.

If hatred is supposed to be disappearing, early warnings are dismissed. If violence is assumed to be regressive noise, preparedness feels unnecessary. If time is the moral engine, human responsibility diminishes.

This is not merely mistaken. It is dangerous.

Antisemitism as the Persistent Falsifier

Every teleological system eventually encounters a fact it cannot absorb. For secular teleology, that fact is antisemitism.

By its own logic, Jew-hatred should be declining steadily. Instead, it resurges repeatedly, often in morally confident societies, often clothed in the dominant ethical language of the era.

This is not new. Antisemitism has previously appeared as historical analysis, scientific racism, economic justice and anti-imperialism. Each time, it presented itself as progressive, enlightened, and necessary. Each time, it was treated as history moving forward.

This is a cycle, not an arc.

Modern secular dogma resolves the problem by redefining antisemitism as anti-Zionism and then recasting it as a progressive force rather than a regressive one.

If antisemitism can be reframed as resistance, liberation, or historical necessity, then the theory survives. Jews - not so much.

The language gives this away: “right side of history,” “inevitability,” “everyone knows a Palestinian state is necessary,” “justice will prevail.”

These are not political arguments. They are teleological claims.

Groups like Bend the Arc are especially revealing. They explicitly invoke the moral arc of history as an authority that overrides Jewish historical memory and Jewish ethical vigilance. In doing so, they abandon Judaism's historically grounded skepticism of inevitability in favor of a secular redemption narrative that has repeatedly turned against Jews.

This is not a new error. It is an old one with modern language.

History Is Not a Straight Line

History did not begin in 1948 or October 7. It did not begin with colonial theory or modern nationalism. It stretches back thousands of years, and Jews have been unwillingly centered in its false redemptions more times than most societies can remember.

That is why Jews recognize false teleology quickly. It isn't cynicism; it is lived experience.

Bondi Beach did not violate history. It violated a false story we told ourselves about history.

When we believe that history will inevitably solve our problems, we lose all agency. We lose vigilance. And we lose the ability to analyze and protect ourselves against entire classes of very real dangers.

Judaism never taught that history improves automatically. It teaches responsibility, today, for all of us, to guard against the constant possibility of regression. It recognizes hate clothed in the garb of justice.

Secular teleology promises moral comfort. It reassures us that time itself is on our side.

Bondi Beach reminds us that it is not. Antisemitism is not fading - it is accelerating.

Progress is possible and historic improvement is real. But inevitability is a lie, and a costly one. When societies outsource moral responsibility to history, they stop seeing danger until it arrives fully formed.

Antisemitism has always been the warning sign. The question is whether we will finally treat it as such.

History does not bend. History doesn't even care.

That is our job.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

Iranian media calls Bondi Beach an Israeli false flag operation

Iranian state media is suggesting that Israel killed the Chanukah party attendees.

Mehr News uses one of Iranian media's favorite methods, interviewing an "expert" to say what they want people to think:

In an interview with Mehr News Agency, Ali Reza Kabiri, an expert on West Asian affairs, believes that studying historical patterns and the performance of Israeli security agencies can provide a clearer understanding of the motives behind this incident and its potential consequences. The following is the text of the interview:

How likely is it that the attack on Jewish religious services in Sydney was orchestrated by Israel itself?

To assess the likelihood of Israeli involvement in the attack on the Jewish religious festival in Sydney, it is essential to examine the documented history of its intelligence operations. Israel is among the few international actors with an official record of conducting security and intelligence operations on the territory of third countries, and these operations have been exposed or subsequently confirmed in several instances. ...

Given the hatred of Zionists and Israel in global public opinion, can this operation be interpreted as a kind of "distortion operation" carried out by the Israeli security services?

Given the widespread anti-Zionist sentiment and hostility towards Israeli policies in global public opinion, this incident, in particular, can be seen as a form of deliberate distortion. Israel has long used the "security of Jews worldwide" as a political and media tool. After every wave of widespread criticism against the regime, the media's focus intensifies significantly on "anti-Semitism, Jewish insecurity, and the need to support Israel." For example, after the 2014 Gaza War and the resulting increase in human rights pressures, Israel and its affiliated institutions launched a broad campaign about "the rise in attacks on Jews in Europe," aiming to shift the victimhood narrative from Palestinians to Jews.

In this context, the shooting at a Jewish religious ceremony in Sydney serves precisely the same psychological and media function: to create emotional shock, regain sympathy in Western public opinion, and alleviate political pressure on Israel. This pattern is not accidental; it is part of a well-known narrative warfare doctrine in which Israel has extensive experience. Therefore, considering Israel a victim in this incident is not merely a weak assumption, but an analysis based on a recurring pattern of behavior.

....
In conclusion, when this historical evidence is combined with political logic, operational history, and Israel's pressing need to shift global public opinion, the analysis of Israeli security services' involvement in the Sydney incident becomes more credible. From a media and psychological perspective, this incident can be fully understood within the context of a strategy to portray Israel as a victim and reconstruct its image, consistent with well-known patterns from the past.

The only political group I've ever seen sacrificing their own people for propaganda advantage in recent years is, of course, Hamas.

Buy EoZ's books on Amazon!

"He's an Anti-Zionist Too!" cartoon book (December 2024)

PROTOCOLS: Exposing Modern Antisemitism (February 2022)

12/14 Links: The Bondi barbarians; The night Australia died; Father-and-son terrorists gunned down Jewish Australians at Bondi beach, young girl among 16 dead

From Ian:

The Bondi barbarians

Australia, like so many other Western nations, has become a cauldron of anti-Semitism since Hamas’s genocidal rampage into Israel on 7 October 2023. The most lethal assault on Jews since the Holocaust sparked not solidarity, but hate marches and a spike in anti-Semitic violence. Melbourne’s Adass Israel synagogue was hit by an arson attack last December. A kosher deli in Bondi was set ablaze in October.

Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese has pointed the finger at Iran for waging this prior campaign of attacks, via a ‘layer cake’ of intermediaries. We wait to learn who was behind the barbarism in Bondi today, and what sick ideology they gunned people down in the name of. Although I dare say we know enough to hazard a guess.

But in Australia, as in Britain, the surge in anti-Semitism cannot be explained away as nefarious actors stirring hatred from afar. The new Jew hatred, expressed through a maniacal hatred of Israel, has exploded under Albanese’s watch – all but encouraged by his (and Starmer’s) decision to ‘recognise’ Palestine, effectively rewarding the 7 October pogromists for their efforts.

Thus, places Jews once fled to no longer feel so safe. The Adass Israel synagogue, torched last year, was built by Holocaust survivors. Arsen Ostrovsky, a human-rights lawyer who survived the 7 October attacks, moved to Australia two weeks ago to fight anti-Semitism in the country. He was injured at Bondi. ‘I never thought I would see this in Australia’, he told Channel 9, his bandaged face smeared with blood. No wonder so many Jews are moving to Israel.

If Jews aren’t safe in Bondi or Manchester, if they cannot attend a Hanukkah celebration or synagogue on Yom Kippur without their mind beginning to turn to the worst, then we can no longer claim to be enlightened nations. Leaders have looked the other way as a sulphurous Jew hatred has bubbled up from below, welcomed in through porous borders, fomented by multiculturalism, propagandised in the streets by Islamists, and enthusiastically embraced by woke useful idiots.

The Bondi pogrom showed us the worst of humanity – barbarians who hate Jews, hate freedom, hate life. But it also showed us the best. The woman who took a bullet for a three-year-old girl she didn’t even know. There’s the mighty Ahmed al Ahmed, the fruitshop owner who snuck up on and disarmed one of the killers. He saved countless lives, before taking two bullets himself. Beautiful, incredible heroism. Sadly, we’re going to need a lot more of it if we are to defeat this evil in our midst.

Brendan O'Neill: Like the heroes of Bondi, we should all be tackling anti-Semites

We live in a ‘walk-on-by’ society. Ours is an era in which the active citizen has been ruthlessly decommissioned by the deathless technocrats who rule over us. They don’t even trust us to raise our kids properly, far less overpower the armed haters of humanity. The end result is that too many people look the other way when tyranny strikes – or worse, stand and film it. One thinks of the crowd that gathered round the Islamist killers of Lee Rigby, faithfully filming their deranged ranting. How much better for humanity it would have been if the crowd had forcefully subdued those hysterics and taken their cleavers.

Bravery finds a way, though. The human instinct to help is not so easily crushed. One thinks of the men who hurled beer glasses and chairs at the three radical Islamists who went on a stabbing spree in London Bridge in 2017. Or Ignacio Echeverría, the Spanish national who used his skateboard to beat one of those London Bridge terrorists (sadly, he was subsequently killed). And now Ahmed al Ahmed, the fortysomething conqueror of a modern-day Nazi.

‘Don’t be a have-a-go hero’, we’re so often told. It’s advice we should resolutely ignore. Having a go is precisely what more of us should be doing. And not only in the heat of an all-out act of Jewphobic barbarism, but in everyday life, too. After all, the violent loathing that shook Sydney today did not emerge in a vacuum. This neo-fascist animus for the Jewish homeland and the Jewish people has been stewing for years. If more of us had ‘had a go’ earlier, perhaps we could have seen off, or at least tamed, this gravest menace in Western society.

Don’t wait until it turns violent. ‘Have a go’ now. If you see someone carrying a placard calling Jews Nazis, get in their face. If you see a keffiyeh mob outside a synagogue, confront them. If you see a frothing Islamist or leftist harassing a Jew in public, put yourself between the scumbag and his victim. Don’t run, hide and tell – stand, fight and tell them to fuck off. Enough is enough. Get out there.

Jeremy Leibler: Bondi Beach Hanukkah shooting is an attack on Australia itself

While the Jewish community gathered in Sydney to mark the first night of Hanukkah, our community was subjected to a horrific act of violence.

This is a day of profound grief. Members of our community have been murdered. Others have been seriously wounded. Families are shattered. A sacred moment of light has been turned into darkness.

We are working urgently with authorities as further details are confirmed. Our focus right now is on the victims, their families, and the safety of the community.

An attack on Australia
Let me be clear. An attack on Jews celebrating their faith is an attack on Australia itself. It is an assault on our values, our social cohesion, and the basic right of people to gather without fear.

This did not occur in a vacuum. For years, antisemitic incitement, vilification, and intimidation have been allowed to grow unchecked. When hatred is normalized, violence follows. Tonight, that warning has become reality.

We mourn those who have lost their lives. We pray for the wounded and for the families waiting in anguish. And we stand united, determined that terror and hatred will not drive Jews from public life in this country.

Australia must respond with moral clarity, decisive leadership, and action. Anything less would be a betrayal of those we lost tonight.

The writer is the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.

Bondi Beach Hanukkah shooting has shattered Australia's illusion of immunity

The shock from this latest attack has reverberated not only through the Jewish community but across Australian society at large. For years, there was a comforting illusion that Australia was immune to antisemitism. Even now, it remains difficult for the general public – and especially for government leaders – to internalize that this reality has fundamentally changed. In recent months, despite the sharp rise in antisemitic incidents and violence against Jews, the Jewish community has repeatedly been reassured by authorities: “Everything will be fine. You are safe and protected.” And yet, here we are – facing a terror attack of a kind Australia has never seen before, carried out brazenly and without fear.

Lately, many people ask me, "What changed?" How did we get here?

How we got here: What changed with antisemitism in Australia?
For decades, Israel enjoyed broad bipartisan support from Australian governments, support that also extended a protective umbrella over the Jewish community. But in recent elections, a shift occurred. The current government adopted a seemingly “balanced” approach – placing Israel and the Palestinians on the same moral plane and drawing an artificial distinction between Judaism and Zionism. This is not an anti-Jewish government. But the rhetorical and policy shift created a dangerous vacuum – one quickly filled by extremist voices who suddenly felt legitimized to act openly.

Antisemitism in Australia – and globally – is now at levels not seen since before the Holocaust. The Australian government must recognize this reality and respond decisively. If it does not, we will, tragically, face more attacks like the one in Sydney.

Australian leaders must move from words to action. They must fight antisemitism proactively – not merely attempt, and fail, to reactively protect Jewish communities after the damage is done. This fight must take every form necessary: education, legislation, enforcement, public diplomacy, and clear moral leadership. This is the moment for real, courageous action. Without it, Jews will no longer be able to live in safety – not in Australia, and not anywhere that continues to deny the gravity of this threat.