After the Mass Murder of Jews on Hanukkah Half a World Away: Education and Accountability 

We cannot simply bemoan the murder of 15 Jews celebrating Hanukkah at distant Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, this weekend, picked off one by one by a couple of hate-filled killers. 

That won’t cut it. Not anymore. 

The dead include a rabbi, a Holocaust survivor and a 10-year-old who showed up to pet the baby goats on the first night of the Festival of Lights. People of conscience must do more than just feel terrible. 

The rise of antisemitism in the global West – Australia, Western Europe and the United States – is a poison that has been seeping its way into the mainstream for several years, most particularly since the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023. The warnings of groups like the Anti-Defamation League, advocates for Israel like Debra Messing to Gal Gadot, politicians who see the rising threat such as Republic senator Ted Cruz to Democratic Sen. John Fetterman and people like me who are desperate to cling to a sane public discourse, have not woken the conscience of those who matter. 

Now it must. We are sleepwalking into disaster. 

I wonder when the West will awaken and realize that antisemitism is a rising menace that does untold carnage when fully unleashed. At the moment it is growing by leaps and bounds, with little check on its spread. We see the weakest of responses, always coming after the fact. 

Australia is a case study of a Western democracy that has allowed the poison to spread, with a firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne a year ago, antisemitic graffiti and harassment at synagogues, Jewish schools and institutions, and arson and other vandalism. Nearly 1,700 incidents of Jew-hatred have been logged in the last year. Jewish groups have been begging the government to do more. 

But it’s not merely a problem in Australia. Ireland and Spain are not far behind in their open tolerance of Jew-hatred cloaked in anti-Israel activism. The poison is now everywhere in the democratic West, including the United States. We are waiting to find out more about the fatal shootings at Brown University this weekend, in a class led by a Jewish professor who taught on the “intersection of economics and Jewish studies.” 

When many Jewish New Yorkers worried aloud that mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani would not condemn the slogan “Globalize the Intifada,” these actions are exactly what they feared. 

Will we, as a society, take active steps to stop the resurgence of this hatred which threatens to destroy our values as well as endanger the safety of Jewish citizens? Or will we find ourselves 80 years in the rearview mirror, relying on the kindness of strangers to hide Jewish neighbors in the basement? 

Our government needs to take a multi-pronged, strategic approach to the problem, which is separate from its policy approach toward Israel and the geopolitics of the Middle East. 

In the media, we need more thoughtful discussion and education about the history of this issue. Antisemitism is currently being given a stamp of approval by the likes of Tucker Carlson, Candace Owen and the increasingly accepted Nick Fuentes, an actual neo-Nazi. Hasan Piker holds up his end of this hatred on the left. I personally think those folks are nuts, peddling conspiracies, easily disproved lies and honestly just plain drivel (once upon a space-laser).

Unfortunately, lots of young people find them fascinating and even Joe Rogan sometimes lets these ideas onto his show. There is no counterweight in mainstream media of which I’m aware. 

Rachel Maddow: You’ve taken on every historic instance of racism in our country, including against Japanese-Americans in your latest podcast series. When will you address antisemitism?

In Hollywood, there is a vocal humanitarian effort on behalf of Palestinian suffering, which includes many Jews such as Mandy Patinkin. We need a similar broad-based and full-throated call against antisemitism, not merely by our now-usual suspects of Messing, Gadot and Michael Rappaport. This industry which takes such pride in championing the marginalized, calling out discrimination and racism must also speak out loudly against violence toward Jews. Mark Ruffalo, Hannah Einbinder, Javier Bardem, I hope you will do so. 

And finally, an accounting must finally come to the Muslim institutions that cherish freedom and their own safety. Extremist ideology, including hatred of Jews, has been allowed to fester for decades in a religion that has the word “peace,” Salaam, embedded in its name. Copies of “Mein Kampf” and “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” – vile antisemitic propaganda – are still commonly found in Arab countries, feeding hatred and libelous conspiracies. The Muslim Brotherhood’s intolerant ideology cannot stand as the mainstream. 

These are long term efforts that governments, cultural institutions, religious leaders and decent people everywhere must undertake. 

Individuals do matter. The lives of untold innocents were saved by the heroic action of a fruit-seller named Ahmed el-Ahmad, a 43-year-old Muslim who risked his life to tackle one of the killers. This man stands for decency and bravery beyond measure. 

Our world is full of people with such moral courage. This weekend I watched the documentary “Unbroken,” about a family of seven Jewish children in Berlin who were saved during World War Two by a German farmer and his wife, who hid them at their farm outside the city for two years. Their courage is stunning, even today. I met Beth Lane, the filmmaker who is the daughter of the youngest in this family, Bela Weber. The story (streaming on Netflix for those who are interested) is one of countless miracles that today stand as a counterargument to the crushing evil of the Holocaust. 

But we cannot go back there. The safety of Jews cannot depend on the heroic actions of a single individual. 

We have choices. We are not condemned to repeat calamities of the past. Less than a century ago more than half of world Jewry was wiped out. Let us resolve that this never happen again. This requires more than a shrug or even a tear. It requires determination, moral choices and action.

Happy Hanukkah. 

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