At a recent peaceful Hanukkah celebration of Australian Jews at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, two gunmen opened fire on families who were singing, laughing, eating festive food and enjoying fellowship. Fifteen innocent people were killed, and more than 50 were wounded.

The mourning has begun, but the anger and alienation felt by the Jewish community there will not go away. What happened at Bondi Beach is a turning point for Jews worldwide. America needs to pay attention.

My wife and I are Jewish, and she was born and raised in Australia. We visited there recently and experienced the growing animosity toward Jews. We were staying in a hotel in the central business district of Melbourne when we got a call from a Jewish friend warning us to leave town immediately. Four angry anti-Jewish mobs were swarming through the city. We managed to get a cab and flee to a location outside of town before we were caught in the middle of things.

In a recent editorial in the Wall Street Journal, former Australian prime minister Scott Morrison wrote a scathing condemnation of the current Australian government, saying it had failed its Jewish community in a number of ways, but most important was by tolerating the rise in antisemitism.

Angry mobs yelling “globalize the intifada” and “F - - k the Jews” were allowed to gather to threaten not only social cohesion in the country but Jewish lives. When the Bondi Beach massacre took place, Jews were devastated but not surprised. They knew this was coming. They understood this is precisely what “globalizing the intifada” means.

The massacre in Australia is affecting Jews everywhere, including in the United States. It is a sign of how the danger for Jews increases when threats are tolerated, harassment is dismissed and violence is ignored. The Australian Jews had felt that they were safe and accepted, but they were wrong.

In the United States, antisemitism has been increasing for years, and especially since the terrorist attack on Jews in Israel on October 7, 2023. During the last year, nearly one in five Jews in the United States was either the victim of an assault, was physically threatened or was verbally attacked.

The Anti-Defamation League reports that antisemitic incidents have reached their highest level ever in America. Colleges and universities have become havens for those who advocate violence toward Jews. Jewish student associations have been set on fire. Jews have been insulted and attacked on the streets. Synagogues have been firebombed. America is in the midst of its own nightmare, and it can get worse.

Let me be clear. This threat to Jews has nothing to do with a dispute over land in the Middle East. Hamas is not a national liberation movement. This is pure Jew-hatred, people attacking Jews for being Jews, and any attempt to deny this is dishonest. Hamas itself is, according to its founding covenant, devoted to the annihilation of Jews everywhere.

It also seeks world domination of its radical Islamist way of life, which means it is not just a threat to Jews; it is the enemy of Western Civilization. And that should worry all of us.

American Jews often try to comfort themselves, believing they have a friend in U.S. President Donald Trump. It is true that Trump has been a solid supporter of Israel, even through the trials and tribulations of the Gaza war. In addition, Trump has taken a strong stand against the rise of antisemitism on college and university campuses.

This support, while real, is undermined by Trump’s promotion of the conspiracy mentality. He talks incessantly about a mysterious “deep state,” controlled by an unnamed, globalist elite, who are destroying the country. He supports the notion of the “great replacement” conspiracy, which blames Jews for attempting to replace patriotic, White Americans with foreigners. This is why White supremacists chanted “the Jews will not replace us,” during their “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017.

Antisemitism is, at its core, not racism or hatred of Jews; it is about conspiracy — the notion that Jews are behind a hidden, global effort to undermine the foundations of countries. So, when the conspiracy mentality is unleashed, Jews are put at risk. And now, the MAGA movement is splitting, with its antisemitic elements emerging more powerfully than ever. Will antisemitism be central to the post-Trump MAGA movement?

American Jews see the same things happening here that led to the Bondi massacre in Australia. The question is: Will we be able to change course in time to fend off the explosion of violence toward Jews that is coming our way?

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ABOUT THE WRITER

Solomon D. Stevens is the author of “Religion, Politics, and the Law” (co-authored with Peter Schotten) and “Challenges to Peace in the Middle East.” He wrote this for InsideSources.com.

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