An ancient hatred resurfaces

Last week, I was in Israel, where I met survivors of the Oct. 7, 2023, terror attacks. A few days later, back in the United States, my family and I looked forward to the start of Hanukkah, which we would be celebrating with friends starting on Sunday evening. On Sunday morning, I woke up to the news from Australia about the Bondi Beach attack. For my family and I—as for Jews around the world—our holiday excitement was interrupted with news of tragedy. Sadly, it was not a new experience. On Sunday evening, we joined with friends and lit the Hanukkah lights.

This confluence of events drove me to reflect anew on the challenges Jewish people have faced and continue to face.

Anti-Semitism is alive and active in the world today. Radical Islamist organizations like Hamas have publicly committed themselves to eliminate Israel. But it’s not just Israel as a political entity that is the target of terrorists, as the Bondi Beach attack demonstrates.

As the Australian prime minister noted on Tuesday, the gunmen who murdered Jews on the beach were acting based on “Islamic State ideology.” The attack was not on Israel, and it was not on Israelis. Either would have been reprehensible, of course. But the point here is that the attack was as far as possible from being connected to Middle East politics. The attack was on Australian Jews lighting a menorah to celebrate Hanukkah on a beach in Australia—almost 9,000 miles from Israel. The message could not have been clearer: this was an attack on Jews for being Jews.

Anti-Semitism is no new development. Jews have been the objects of hatred and persecution again and again, going back to the ancient world. A group that maintains its identity and its faith, Jews have always been different. It was, in fact, part of God’s call in Scripture. Be separate, be distinct—those are messages that echo through the Torah and the prophetic writings. But being distinctive is dangerous in our fallen world. Most kids learn a version of this lesson fairly early on in schools and on playgrounds: It’s safer to do what everyone else is doing. When you don’t conform, when you stand out, you are an easy target for bullies.

Jews have stood out for three millennia.

Time and again, anti-Jewish action arose and threatened Jews. Political movements, ideological fads, religious messages—the framing changed while the anti-Jewish content remained. In the Bible, an ancient pharaoh sought to drown the Jewish baby boys, and later a Persian prime minister, Haman, planned the killing of the whole Jewish community. After the close of the canon of the Hebrew Scriptures, the pattern continued. A Seleucid Greek ruler, Antiochus IV Epiphanes, sought to end the Jewish religion and integrate Jews into Hellenistic religious practice. (If that had happened, there would have been no Torah-keeping, faithful community by which the prophecies could be fulfilled of a coming Messiah, the son of David.) In the Jewish diaspora after the second century A.D., the persecutions and expulsions recurred regularly as Jews provided a convenient scapegoat upon which to blame political and social ills.

On my visit, I walked the grounds of the Nova music festival in southern Israel. On Oct. 7, 2023, the site was full of festival attendees when Hamas terrorists arrived and commenced a brutal and bloody attack. By the end of the hours-long slaughter, 378 Israelis would be dead, 44 would be taken hostage, and many more were injured. I met a survivor of the attack and heard her chilling story of hiding among dead bodies to avoid being killed by Hamas attackers. She also told of her disconcerting experience on an America university campus some two years after the attack. While visiting friends on that campus, she saw students holding a memorial event for the Hamas “freedom fighters” who fought and died on Oct. 7. Shocked, the young woman approached the students and asked what they were celebrating. When the students realized that she had survived the Nova attack, they refused to talk to her.

Some, of course, want to distinguish anti-Israel activity from anti-Semitic activity. True, one can politically criticize the state of Israel and its policies without hostility to Jews. But it’s also true that anti-Israel perspectives can be accompanied by anti-Semitism. And indeed, hostility to Israel can provide a cloak of respectability for hostility to Jews. Students like those on the American college campus celebrating Hamas as “freedom fighters,” activists who seek to “globalize the intifada,” are playing with fire. Violence is excused or minimized or even justified. And, too often, too easily, Jews in general are taken as proxies of Israel.

Bondi Beach shows where that can end. An “Islamic State ideology” radicalized gunmen who thought that killing Jews on a beach in Australia would, in some way, make the world a better place.

Jews, once again, are easily identifiable, easy to target. And they are targets.

Yet amidst this, Jews around the world are celebrating the start of Hanukkah. As I explained in more detail in a column two years ago, Hanukkah commemorates one of those times in history when the Jews’ continued existence was at stake. Against significant odds, a Jewish resistance movement prevailed against the Seleucid Greek king. The Jewish people lived on. Hanukkah celebrates that providential protection by God.

This Hanukkah, the attack at Bondi Beach reminds us that we cannot be complacent. Anti-Semitic rhetoric is commonplace in our world. Jews have been attacked. People have died—this week, just as so many times in the past. And yet by God’s mercy the Jewish people have not been destroyed. For me as a Jewish American, I am grateful. And my experiences of the past week have left me more committed to being a voice for truth against ideologies that promote hate. I hope that this season will see many more—Jews and Gentiles alike—commit to this important calling. Christians who follow a Jewish Messiah should be first among them.