Call it was it was.
The attack on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, at the start of the eight-day holiday of Chanukah was not random. It was not a “disturbance.” It was not an isolated violent incident untethered from global events. It was not an unfortunate individual suffering from mental illness.
It was a terrorist attack, carried out against Jews, on a Jewish holiday, in a moment deliberately chosen for its symbolism.
Jews everywhere understood that immediately—because we always do.
On the very first day of the “Festival of Lights,” 15 Jews, including children, were murdered. Families were shattered. Communities were thrown into lockdown. And as I head to Chanukah events this week in Florida with my own kids, I will do something that should horrify any civilized society: I will carry a gun so that we can celebrate a Jewish holiday in public with personal protection.
That is not fear-mongering. It is the lived reality of Jewish life right now.
This attack did not happen in a vacuum.
In the weeks leading up to it, Iran’s ambassador was expelled. The Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps was formally designated a terrorist organization. Tehran responded the way it always does—with threats, warnings of consequences, promises that retaliation would come.
Then, at Chanukah time, a slew of Jews were murdered, with nearly triple as many wounded.
Tehran doesn’t need to issue a press release to take credit for every act of terror it inspires. The regime has spent decades perfecting plausible deniability, outsourcing violence through global ideological proxies, sleeper cells and radicalized sympathizers who require little more than incitement and timing. Jewish targets are not incidental. They are intentional.
That is why the U.S. government’s response matters. When Washington publicly states that the State of Israel has the right to retaliate if Iran is involved, it is not speculation. It is recognition. It is an acknowledgment that this attack fits a pattern the world has seen before—and ignored at its peril.
Yet once again, Jews are told to wait. To soften our language. To avoid “politicizing” our own deaths.
We are told that investigations take time, as if Jews are obligated to suspend pattern recognition. As if history has not already written this script for us, again and again.
Chanukah commemorates a moment when Jews refused to accept the terms imposed on them by violent powers. The Maccabees did not debate whether hatred was sufficiently proven before defending themselves. They understood that survival requires clarity.
Today, clarity is in short supply, except, it seems, among Jews.
When synagogues require armed guards, when parents debate whether to light menorahs in public or put them in the window of a home, when celebrating a holiday requires calculating escape routes, the problem is not Jewish paranoia. The problem is a world that refuses to confront antisemitic terror until Jews are buried, one after the other.
This was a terrorist attack. Say it plainly.
And understand what it means when Jews, on Chanukah, must choose between visibility and safety.
We will light the candles anyway. We always do. But the cost of Jewish life should not be eternal vigilance alone. It should be moral courage from those who claim to lead the free world.
Because if murdering Jews during Chanukah is not terrorism, then the word has lost all decency; it has lost its morality.
