Posted on 12/16/2025 4:04:46 AM PST by MtnClimber
After another massacre, Jews are reminded of a truth our enemies never grasp: History belongs to those who refuse to disappear.
Like so many Jews, I was woken up in the early morning today to news of the massacre in Bondi Beach, Australia. Like so many Jews, I personally knew people who were hurt in the attack. And like so many Jews, I grieved for the victims and raged as public officials who cheered on the policies that made the attack possible rushed to publish sanctimonious denunciations, as if they had failed to understand that the shooting was precisely what was meant by “Globalize the intifada.”
But amid the profound sadness and the righteous indignation, one timeless truth mustn’t be forgotten: We Jews are going to be just fine.
Attack us, as Hamas did Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, and you’ll soon discover that Jewish blood is no longer cheap. For more details, kindly consult with Yahya Sinwar, Hassan Nasrallah, or the gentlemen in charge of Iran’s nuclear program.
Try to scare us away from being Jewish—as the marauders attempting a pogrom outside Manhattan’s Park East Synagogue did recently, chanting “Make them scared” as they violently harassed Jews attempting to enter the building—and you’ll discover that you’ve accomplished just the opposite. The formerly loosely committed among us are now walking around with enormous Star of David necklaces, and the Simchat Torah Challenge, which encourages Jews to come together and read the weekly Torah portion together, drew tens of thousands of members and is growing exponentially. These are two anecdotes; there are many more.
We’ll mourn the dead, we’ll comfort the afflicted, we’ll carry on. It’s been millennia now; we’ve gotten good at it. And we’ll continue to grow stronger because we draw our courage and our resolve from that ancient covenant that charges us, always and forever, to spread God’s light and love to a benighted, blood-soaked world. Our great prophet Micah captured the mission statement perfectly long ago: “They shall sit every man under his vine and under his fig tree; and none shall make them afraid: for the mouth of the Lord of Hosts hath spoken it.”
And yet, in each generation, some clearly fail to get the memo, believing instead that it’s possible to make them—us, the Jews, and with us, the entire world—afraid by means of brute force. How does that work out? A brief history lesson tells the story.
Rome, the former empire that showed us no mercy, is now a sweaty, smoggy city depending on tourist dollars to survive.
Spain, birthplace of the Inquisition, has let in some 600,000 migrants a year since 2022 and now faces the highest unemployment rate on the continent.
England, having been the first to expel the Jews in 1290, now arrests people for making true statements on social media while turning a blind eye to the mass rape of its own daughters by gangs of vicious migrants slowly devouring the country.
France, Germany, Canada, Australia—it’s the same story everywhere you look. A West too weak to define, let alone defend, its own values, and hordes of marauders settling in and reshaping the culture in their violent, hateful image.
So don’t worry about us. Worry about Sydney, Toronto, Paris, and the other former capitals of culture and innovation that are now drowned by waves of angry savages cheering on murder and sowing chaos and violence. Worry about the kind folks in Germany who let in hundreds of thousands of Muslims in the name of multicultural benevolence, only to be told that they may no longer enjoy their Christmas markets because their new neighbors may feel inclined to blow them up, shoot them up, or ram them with cars. Worry about the politicians who continue to take suicidal symbolic steps, like recognizing “Palestine” or prattling on about “Islamophobia,” even as they drain their nations of their freedoms and securities.
Almost immediately after the shooting in Sydney, some on social media took to sharing the famous photograph of a menorah in a window in Kiel, Germany, in 1931, with the Nazi flag hanging from the facade of the party’s regional headquarters across the street. The photo is indeed worth a thousand words: Hanukkah has never been a holiday of passive faith. It commemorates a moment when Jews refused to surrender their identity to those who demanded conformity. Hanukkah teaches that Jewish survival is not rooted in denial of danger, but in the courage to affirm who we are anyway.
Nearly a century later, we still light menorahs with joy and conviction, whereas the Nazi flag and those who believed in it are all gone. Nearly a century later, the Jewish state leads the way in everything from innovation to birthrates to happiness, while the birthplace of Goethe and Schiller finds its fertility in free fall, its politics in turmoil, and its future darkened by violent invaders who despise its culture and show it no fealty or gratitude.
Today’s Nazis will soon meet a similarly grim ending, their green-red-white-and-black flag tossed to the same dustbin of history as the swastika. Let the savages ululate their blood libels as they always have. Let them accuse the Jews of whatever they want. The people of forever aren’t afraid.
Liel Leibovitz is editor-at-large for Tablet Magazine and the host of its weekly podcast Rootless and its daily Talmud podcast Take One.
Worry about New York, Seattle, Portland and Los Angeles.
Fear NOT !
‘I AM With You’
Says The Lord GOD Almighty.
Amen
Yup.
Thanks for posting this.
In this vein, I donned my IDF t-shirt for the gym today before encountering this article.
:-)
God’s chosen people...
Very good read. The problem I see is that the majority of the Jewish community will still vote for the politicians that are allowing the green/red/white and black flag people to create hostility and fear along with unchecked antisemitism. We are seeing leaders so afraid of losing their positions that they won’t even stand up for their own constituents. And they sell their souls for money and power.
Wonderful words of defiance! Never give up!
Thanks. I am not Jewish, but I sympathize with their plight. I spent some time in the Middle East doing work for the US military and saw the hatred of the Jews first hand.
I learned about this Sunday. It was a wedding party of a friend and I had no idea he was Jewish nor gave any thought that it was Hanukkah. There is a world war going on between liberalism and their evil islamic allies and people of the faith. This will not end well for anyone but it is a battle that will eventually be fought whether we like it or not.
Well-written message. Thank you for posting it.
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