Editorial: A weekend of hatred hat tears at the soul

Las Vegas Review-Journal, Las Vegas Review-Journal on Dec 17, 2025

Published in Op Eds

By clicking submit, I authorize Arcamax and its affiliates to: (1) use, sell, and share my information for marketing purposes, including cross-context behavioral advertising, as described in our Privacy Policy , (2) add to information that I provide with other information like interests inferred from web page views, or data lawfully obtained from data brokers, such as past purchase or location data, or publicly available data, (3) contact me or enable others to contact me by email or other means with offers for different types of goods and services, and (4) retain my information while I am engaging with marketing messages that I receive and for a reasonable amount of time thereafter. I understand I can opt out at any time through an email that I receive, or by clicking here

The heart-wrenching news over the weekend came in waves, a tsunami of senseless tragedy and calculated malevolence. Two dead and several others wounded in a mass shooting at Brown University in Rhode Island; two U.S. national guardsmen and an interpreter ambushed and murdered in Syria; 15 dead and 40 wounded after a terror attack in Australia targeting Jews celebrating the start of Hanukkah.

Evil reared its ugly head across the globe.

The motive behind this country’s most recent mass school shooting remained a mystery on Monday. Authorities had yet to make an arrest. The impetus behind the other two tragedies was more clear. The suspect in the Syria attack, who was also killed, was an ISIS gunman waging his version of jihad. The massacre Down Under also involved jihadists consumed with an age-old and particularly insidious pathology, antisemitism.

The conflict in the Middle East has emboldened those who harbor this irrational hatred, and nations ignore it at their own peril.

Australian authorities said the attack was carried out by Sajid Akram, 50, who came to the country in 1998 on a student visa. His accomplice was his son, 24-year-old Naveed Akram, who had previously been questioned by police. They shouted “Allahu Akbar” as they slaughtered innocent Jews, including a 10-year-old and a Holocaust survivor, according to a police briefing. ABC News reported Monday that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said the attack was “motivated by extremist ideology.”

Police shot and killed the elder Akram. The younger assailant was subdued by a bystander, who confronted him and wrestled the gun away, a heroic action caught on videotape and perhaps a fitting metaphor for dealing with those who embrace the toxic ideologies of hate. The bystander, identified by the BBC as Ahmed al Ahmed, 43, was shot multiple times but is expected to survive. His father told BBC Arabic that, “Ahmed was driven by his sentiment, conscience and humanity.” Fitting words for the statue to be dedicated in his honor.

The attack, along with a concerning increase in anti-Jewish hate crimes in the United States, serves as a warning about passivity in the face of inhumanity.

“The violence didn’t emerge from nowhere,” Peter Kurti, an Australian professor wrote in a Wall Street Journal opinion piece this week. “It was the most extreme expression of a wound to the body politic that has been allowed to fester. … Antisemitism isn’t simply another form of prejudice. It is a distinct and historically lethal ideology.”

This weekend’s events tear at the soul. Never has it been more true that, as John Stuart Mill put it more than 150 years ago, “Bad men need nothing more to compass their ends, than that good men should look on and do nothing.”