An Attack on Hanukkah and All That It Means

The murder of at least 16 people at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach is another bloody milestone in the global war against the Jews. The massacre of Maccabees down under claimed the life of, among others, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a Chabad emissary. It is especially enraging to see the Festival of Lights come under attack from forces of darkness. The act of terror, while shocking, cannot be a surprise given Australia’s own abject appeasement. Canberra cannot claim that it was not warned that its long-running hostility to Jews and the Jewish State would yield tragic results. Footage from October 9, 2023, shows a mob outside of Sydney’s renowned opera house chanting “gas the Jews.” One Jewish Australian, Daniel Aghion, tells Sky News that antisemitism in the last two years has been “off the scale — at a level we’ve never seen” and that the last two years have been horrible for Australia’s Jews.Another warning came in August in a letter to Australia’s prime minister, Anthony Albanese, from Israel’s premier, Benjamin Netanyahu, in the wake of Mr. Albanase’s endorsement of a state for the Palestinian Arabs. Mr. Netanyahu told him that a “call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire. It rewards Hamas terrorists. It emboldens those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets.”On Sunday Mr. Netanyahu told Mr. Albanese in a statement that rather than heed Jerusalem’s warning “you replaced weakness with weakness and appeasement with more appeasement. Your government did nothing to stop the spread of antisemitism in Australia. You did nothing to curb the cancer cells that were growing inside your country. You took no action. You let the disease spread.” The result, he added, is the “attacks on Jews we saw today.”Good for Bibi for his straight talk. Among the symptoms of the disease of which he speaks are, among other outrages, arson attacks last year on a kosher supermarket and synagogue that Australia concluded were orchestrated by Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps. The toll Sunday could have been even worse. Explosive devices were discovered at a vehicle near the beach. Two pipe bombs were thrown at the crowd but failed to detonate.A Hanukkah hero emerged in the person of Ahmed al Ahmed, whom Mr. Netanyahu lauds as a “Muslim brave man.” Footage shows him tackling and disarming one of the gunmen. The Sydney Morning Herald reports that Mr. al Ahmed “owns a fruit business.” The premier of New South Wales, Chris Minns, credits him with the “most unbelievable scene I’ve ever seen.” President Trump calls Mr. al Ahmed a “very, very brave person.”Even with Mr. al Ahmed’s heroism, the murder of 16 — including at least one Holocaust survivor and one child — and the wounding of some three dozen more makes the attack on Bondi Beach the worst instance of antisemitic violence since October 7 and among the most harrowing in recent decades. It also underscores the heroic work of Chabad, which in bringing Judaism into the public square put themselves on the front lines.The attack on Bondi Beach was, among other things, an attack on Hanukkah itself and all for which it has stood since the days when the Hasmoneans hammered the Hellenists and purified the Temple. The fight for Jewish sovereignty in the Land of Israel and for pride in the practice of Judaism’s ancient rites around the globe goes on, as this recent attack puts in tragic relief. Australia faces a choice. If it can’t decide whose side it’s on now, when will it ever?

An Attack on Hanukkah and All That It Means

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