I thought that when the last of the living hostages came home that I would end my war diary blog, but truth be told... the war is not over, so much has happened in the last few months and it turns out, I have more to say. 🤷🏼♀️
It is currently the 5th day of Hannukah, tonight being the 6th candle and the rise in antisemitic violence is hitting a disturbingly new pace.
On Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, on the evening of December 14, 2025, a major terrorist attack was perpetrated by two gunmen who opened fire on a crowd of approximately 1,000 people attending the "Chanukah by the Sea" celebration. 16 people were murdered and over 40 were injured.
Victims ranged in age from 10-year-old child Matilda (who escaped war in the Ukraine) to an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, and Chabad Rabbi Eli Schlanger, the event’s organizer. Authorities recovered six firearms and several improvised explosive devices (IEDs) from the scene.
In Crown Heights, Brooklyn, New York, a Jewish man was stabbed in an unprovoked antisemitic assault.
In Redlands, California on December 12 (just prior to the holiday) and continuing into the week of Hanukkah, a Jewish family's home (which was decorated with a menora) was targeted in a drive-by shooting. Attackers fired approximately 20 rounds while shouting antisemitic slurs and "Free Palestine."
In Cardiff, Wales, authorities charged two suspects for plotting terrorist attacks against a local synagogue and a Jewish cemetery.
In San Francisco, California, an individual was arrested in connection with an arson attack that caused significant damage to the San Francisco Hillel (a Jewish college/university campus organization).
In Amsterdam, Netherlands, on December 14, hundreds of protesters gathered outside the Royal Concertgebouw to disrupt a Hanukkah concert. Smoke bombs were thrown at the venue, and attendees were reportedly harassed as they entered.
Following the Bondi Beach massacre, police departments in major cities including New York, London, and Paris have placed synagogues and Hanukkah events under "high alert," citing a credible threat environment and a rise in "copycat" rhetoric online.
It is common for incidents affecting the Jewish community to fall into a "grey area", where the motive isn't immediately legally classified as antisemitic, but the context and atmosphere make them deeply alarming to Jewish people.
Since the beginning of Hanukkah 2025, several such events have occurred. These often involve "suspicious" activities, incidents labeled as political protests that feel personally targeting, or violent crimes where the religious link is suspected but yet not proven.
At Columbia University a recent Task Force report highlighted a recurring trend where Jewish and Israeli faculty are "singled out" during lectures. On the eve of Hanukkah, reports surfaced of Jewish students being "scatologically harassed" or excluded from study groups. While often framed by the perpetrators as "anti-Zionist" political expression, the Jewish community has expressed alarm that these actions specifically target individuals based on their identity or perceived connection to Israel.
After the recent murder of Professor Nuno Loureiro at MIT, the campus was placed on lockdown. While Loureiro was not publicly identified as Jewish, the fact that he was a high-profile academic killed shortly after the Brown University shooting created a "climate of fear" for Jewish faculty across the Ivy League and MIT, leading to several professors requesting temporary remote-teaching accommodations.
Security firms like JShield and the CST (Community Security Trust) have reported a significant increase in "hostile reconnaissance." This includes individuals filming the entrances of synagogues and Chabad houses during Hanukkah candle-lightings in cities like London, Toronto, and New York.
During the first three days of Hanukkah, dozens of Jewish institutions in the United States received "vaguely menacing" letters referencing the conflict in Gaza. Because many of these letters do not contain explicit threats of violence or specific antisemitic slurs, they are often classified as "suspicious mail" rather than hate crimes, yet they have forced many communities to move their celebrations behind "higher walls."
Days before the Bondi shooting, a man attempted to set fire to the door of a synagogue in Melbourne, Australia while a separate group protested at a nearby Israeli-owned restaurant. The proximity of these events was seen by the local community as a coordinated effort to intimidate Jewish life.
For the Jewish community, the concern is often not just the act itself, but the normalization of the environment.
Intelligence agencies have noted that "unclassified" incidents (like the vandalism of a Jewish-owned business) often serve as inspiration for more radicalized individuals to commit larger-scale attacks, creating a "sliding scale" of violence.
Leaders in Australia and the UK have recently warned that if security continues to increase, Jewish life will be forced into "protected enclaves," effectively ending the ability for Jews to live openly in secular society... or to be essentially put in "ghettos". 😳
The term "ghettoization" is intentionally provocative, evoking the historical period when Jews were legally restricted to specific neighborhoods. Today, the restriction isn't legal, but behavioral.
Leaders like the UK’s Labour Leader and the Metropolitan Police Commissioner have recently stated that "defending the Jewish way of life is part of defending the liberties of the British way of life." The fear is that if the state cannot guarantee safety in the public square, the Jewish community will be forced to choose between total assimilation (disappearing) or total isolation (the new ghetto).
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