The massacre of Jewish revelers who gathered to celebrate Hanukkah in Bondi beach in Sydney, Australia, is yet another link in a long chain of attacks against Jews driven by hatred of Israel, hatred of the Jewish people and, in its updated and more sophisticated form, hatred of the State of Israel, the nation-state of the Jewish people.
There is a direct line connecting this attack to earlier ones, including the bombings in Paris at the synagogue on Rue Copernic and the Goldenberg restaurant in the early 1980s, the 1994 bombing of the Jewish community center building in Buenos Aires, and attacks against Jews in Casablanca and Istanbul in the early 2000s. This is only a partial list of terrorist attacks in which dozens of Jews were murdered.
Between these major attacks, there has been a long series of hate crimes, many of which are never even reported. These include the torching of synagogues and Jewish schools, harassment and outright assaults against Jewish passersby on the streets of Europe and even in New York, which only recently elected a mayor who denies Israel's right to exist and does not recognize Jews as a people entitled to self-determination and a homeland.
It is possible to downplay the waves of antisemitism sweeping the world, as the Australian government has unsurprisingly done, and claim that the Hanukkah massacre in Sydney was merely an isolated incident carried out by two lone attackers, as if they were aliens who landed on Earth by chance and stumbled into a Hanukkah celebration on the beach. It is also easy to issue vague, nonbinding statements condemning antisemitism, as Australian officials have done, followed by many others around the world, without attempting to understand the nature of twenty-first century antisemitism. This modern form fuses hatred of Jews with hostility toward the State of Israel and uses criticism of Israel, and even calls to erase it from the map, as a cover and pretext for attacking Jews.
What must be done to stop this wave of hatred and terror against Jews around the world? The answer is simple: Learn from the lessons of the past and apply them.
After the attacks on the Twin Towers on September 11, 2001, the Americans did not limit themselves to hunting down individual perpetrators. They went after the leadership, those who initiated, inspired, trained and financed the attackers and their planners. They went to war and toppled the Taliban regime in Afghanistan because it had provided sanctuary to Osama bin Laden. Similarly, in the previous decade, when a wave of attacks inspired by the Islamic State swept through European streets and even reached the US, the Americans did not focus on the lone attacker but waged war against the quasi-state the Islamic State had established in Iraq and Syria and destroyed it.
The collapse of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan and the dismantling of the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria led to a dramatic drop in terrorist attacks, because there is a logic even to the madness of terrorism. Even a lone attacker needs a source of inspiration, someone to finance and train him or his handlers, and, of course, a supportive atmosphere and environment.
Indeed, even in Australia, the government expelled Iran's ambassador last August, accusing Tehran of standing behind the wave of antisemitism that has engulfed the country. It has now emerged that the attackers in Sydney trained with an Islamic terrorist organization operating in the Philippines. The remaining question is who stands behind that organization.
The fact that all roads lead to Tehran should come as no surprise. Terror has always been an effective tool for the Iranians in advancing their interests. In the past, they did not hesitate to cooperate with al-Qaida, their Sunni enemy, in order to strike the "Great Satan," America, and the "Little Satan," Israel. It is also reasonable to assume that Qatar played a role in fueling waves of hatred and antisemitism among Muslims around the world.
The waves of antisemitism and terror are not a marginal phenomenon or a mere nuisance. They are becoming an existential threat to Jews in the Diaspora. Israel has the tools and capabilities to strike terrorists and those who dispatch them, but an international effort is required in the fight against terror. One can only hope that countries and peoples around the world, including in the moderate Muslim world, will rally to this effort. Past experience shows that terrorism must be defeated and that it can be defeated.
