photo: Terrorist attack on Jewish community celebrating first night of Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.

Dec. 14, 2025

Once again, on a day meant to be filled with light, we awoke to news of deadly anti-Jewish violence, this time involving a pair of gunmen targeting a Hanukkah celebration of over 1,000 people at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.  

In solidarity with the Jewish community of Australia and all of Am Yisrael (the Jewish people), we mourn the loss of at least 15 people who were murdered and pray for the refua shleima (complete recovery) of dozens more wounded.  

As we wait to learn more about those stolen from us, JTA reports that the dead included Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a Chabad emissary and father of five who served the Bondi community for 18 years; a Holocaust survivor; an immigrant from France; and a 10-year-old girl. May their memories be a blessing.  

One ray of light was the heroic bravery of Ahmed al-Ahmed, an unarmed civilian who tackled one of the shooters from behind and wrestled the gun from his hands. He was shot twice but thankfully survived.  

— 

“I’m horrified and devastated that this happened, but not shocked,” Lynda Ben-Menashe, president of the National Council of Jewish Women Australia, told The Times of Israel. “Over the past two years, antisemitism has been rising by the month, and the government has not listened to our pleas. When there is no visible consequence to incitement, violence always ensues.” 

To confront this wave of anti-Jewish hostility, we must be grounded in self-respect, clarity, and audacity.  

These are the three guiding principles of the Movement Against Antizionism (MAAZ), a “non-partisan, emergency-response initiative confronting a rapidly escalating antizionist hate movement that is actively endangering Jewish communities worldwide.” 

In that spirit, we must all be clear: this attack emanates from the primary ideological driver of contemporary anti-Jewish hostility—antizionism.  

Antizionism is a hate movement built on defamation and denial that follows the 2,500-year-old pattern of libeling Jews as enemies of whatever society values most. It represents “Act III” in a lineage of anti-Jewish hate that dates back to the biblical period.  

Act I, anti-Judaism, reached its pinnacle with the charge of deicide, which held Jews collectively responsible for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. Subsequently, both Christian and Muslim rule cemented Jews into a subservient status as a living testament to the supremacy of first Christianity and later Islam. 

In Act II, antisemitism built upon previous eras’ lies to re-brand Jews as “racial polluters,” a fashionable hatred that took advantage of the 19th and 20th centuries’ pseudoscientific theories of racial hierarchy.   

Building upon Acts I and II, as Western societies seek redemption for past sins of racism, apartheid, and colonialism, antizionism takes center stage in Act III. Like in previous eras, antizionism projects contemporary society’s own anxieties and unresolved guilt onto Jews and Israel through a patterned cycle of accusation, stigmatization, violence, and denial.  

To be clear, antizionism is not “criticism of Israel.” It is not about borders, political disagreements, or about how to build a better future for Palestinians or Israelis. 

As MAAZ outlines, antizionism is built on a system of anti-Jewish libels: “a web of obsessively repeated accusations designed to activate a 2,000-year-old civilizational reflex to purge Jews from society and ultimately eliminate them.”

The colonialism libel, the genocide libel, the apartheid libel, and other popular antizionist libels don’t operate independently of the anti-Jewish thought patterns developed during Acts I and II—they are the foundation upon which they stand. 

As with previous anti-Jewish libels, well-meaning people, including some Jews themselves, continue to internalize these potent lies without intending to cause harm. 

Today’s attack in Sydney—like the murder of a young couple leaving an event at the Capitol Jewish Museum, the firebombing of a protest calling for Israeli hostages’ freedom, or the arson of the Pennsylvania Governor’s residence hours after Gov. Josh Shapiro held a Passover seder—is the logical result of such antizionist libels.  

“Antizionism does not merely allow violence; it produces it. If the narrative is that “Zionists” embody evil, then violence becomes not just permitted but celebrated. And when Israel itself cannot be struck, Jews abroad become the substitute target.” (MAAZ) 

At JCRC, we are always learning and reassessing the words we choose to effectively educate and advocate on behalf of Am Yisrael.  

Regarding anti-Jewish hostility, institutions and communities must pursue a moral and linguistic shift from the broad construct of “antisemitism” toward confronting antizionism with precision as a distinct political and ideological system with its own genealogy and trail of destruction.    

This shift liberates us from endlessly debating whether any given anti-Israel incident “crosses a line into antisemitism.” Instead, it reveals a hate movement, with its own libels, following the patterns of a larger story.  

“Wherever antizionism takes root, Jewish life withers: suppressed in the Soviet Union, erased across much of the Middle East and North Africa, and now increasingly constrained within Western culture and institutions.” (MAAZ) 

Antizionism has also brought catastrophe to others — including Palestinians and Arabs across the region who have suffered under regimes and movements that instrumentalize hatred of Israel as a distraction from their own corruption as they deny dignity, freedom, and self-determination to their own people. 

This week, as Jews around the world light the Hanukkiah, we remember that Hanukkah itself commemorates a miraculous victory not only against physical annihilation, but against a more subtle and seductive threat: forced assimilation — the demand that Jews abandon their peoplehood in the name of a supposedly enlightened culture. 

Like the three guiding principles we began with, Hanukkah reflects Jewish self-respect, clarity, and audacity. In their rededication of the Second Temple in Jerusalem following its desecration during the war for Jewish national liberation, the Maccabees made a commitment to celebrate their Judaism with pride, honor, and joy.  

We are obligated to bring that same self-respect, clarity, and audacity to the threats against us today. 

We call on elected officials, civic leaders, educators, universities, and all institutions entrusted with shaping public life to recognize antizionism for what it is: the latest manifestation of Jew-hatred and a disastrous ideology squarely at odds with an open, pluralistic society that must be confronted immediately.  

— 

We invite our community and our partners to join us for our annual Hanukkah Party on Thursday, December 18 from 6:00-8:00 p.m., to light the Hanukkah menorah together — in grief, in resolve, and in shared commitment to Jewish life.  

Chag Urim Sameach (Wishing you a joyous festival of lights)