Sunday’s murderous attack on a Hanukkah gathering on Bondi Beach in Sydney has prompted widespread shock and revulsion. The assailants, a father and son, killed at least 15 people and wounded many more in an assault which has unsettled and prompted questions in Australia. The country has long regarded its strict gun-control regime as a safeguard against this kind of atrocity.
For governments far beyond Australia, the immediate concern is the rising threat of anti-Semitic violence within their own borders. The Sydney killings follow a range of attacks, including a mass stabbing at a synagogue in north-west England, and a tightening of security measures across European cities.
It is deeply disturbing that synagogues, schools and other Jewish social spaces in many countries now require an armed presence to ensure the safety of worshippers and children. Equally troubling is how often Jewish citizens report that they no longer feel safe in their country.
This deterioration is taking place against the volatile international backdrop of widespread anger at Israel’s military assault on Gaza and the appalling civilian death toll it has inflicted. Many Jewish people, both in Israel and elsewhere, oppose those actions. It is demonstrably wrong to suggest that criticism of Israeli policy is, by definition, anti-Semitic. But it is equally mistaken to insist that anti-Semitism plays no role within parts of the protest movement.
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Hatred of Jews is one of the oldest and most pernicious prejudices in human history. It resurfaces in different eras and different guises, often cloaking itself in theological justification, racial theory or pseudo-scientific language. Its most horrific expression, the murder of six million Jews in the Holocaust, should have disabused the world of any notion that such hatred simply evaporates. Yet history shows that neither the political right nor the left has been immune from its pull.
In recent years, inflammatory rhetoric directed at those who support the right of the state of Israel to exist has become more common. The term “Zionist”, meaning anyone who supports Israeli statehood, is now used as a derogatory epithet in some circles. Those who deploy the word in this manner would do well to consider the tradition into which they are stepping: the term has long served as a pretext for the persecution of Jews.
Similar concerns arose in the recent controversy over the proposed renaming of Herzog Park in Dublin. Such debates may appear marginal, but they form part of a wider climate in which Jewish communities increasingly feel under suspicion. The imperative for political leaders is clear. They must confront anti-Semitism directly, insist on careful and responsible language, and ensure that legitimate political criticism never becomes a vector for age-old hatred.
