Antisemitism Thrives on Appeasement

Keith Raffel
Wed, 17 Dec 2025 13:40:40 -0800
Opinion

We like to think we're more civilized than our ancestors. The recent murder of at least 15 people celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach in Sydney reminds us we are not. History teaches that when violence against Jews is tolerated, excused or minimized, it does not end. It spreads.

In the year 1190, about 150 Jews took refuge in a castle tower from Englishmen rioting in the town of York. The mob set the building on fire. Some Jews committed suicide, while others were murdered or burned to death. The perpetrators suffered few consequences. Increasing agitation against the Jews resulted in their expulsion from the country a century later.

In 1903, mobs raped and murdered Jews in the Russian-ruled city of Kishinev. The crimes were met with indifference and even tacit approval by the czarist government. The result? Even more violence directed against Jews across the Empire, especially in Odessa in 1905 and Bialystok in 1906.
Updated: Fri Dec 19, 2025

We like to think we're more civilized than our ancestors. The recent murder of at least 15 people celebrating Hanukkah on Bondi Beach in Sydney reminds us we are not. History teaches that when violence against Jews is tolerated, excused or minimized, it does not end. It spreads.

In the year 1190, about 150 Jews took refuge in a castle tower from Englishmen rioting in the town of York. The mob set the building on fire. Some Jews committed suicide, while others were murdered or burned to death. The perpetrators suffered few consequences. Increasing agitation against the Jews resulted in their expulsion from the country a century later.

In 1903, mobs raped and murdered Jews in the Russian-ruled city of Kishinev. The crimes were met with indifference and even tacit approval by the czarist government. The result? Even more violence directed against Jews across the Empire, especially in Odessa in 1905 and Bialystok in 1906.

On Nov. 9, 1938, the infamous Kristallnacht, Night of the Broken Glass, erupted throughout Nazi Germany. In state-sanctioned violence, rampaging rioters destroyed synagogues and Jewish businesses. Jews were murdered in the streets and sent to camps. While the United States and other countries protested, they did not expand the immigration quota for German Jews seeking asylum nor did they impose economic sanctions on Germany. The Nazis got the message. As historian Alan Steinweis wrote, "The Kristallnacht was an important step in a process that culminated in genocide."

On Oct. 7, 2023, the terrorist organization Hamas attacked Israel and murdered over 1,200 civilians. A United Nations report found Hamas committed "gang rape" along with credible evidence of "genital mutilation, sexualized torture." Within 24 hours the Harvard Undergraduate Palestine Solidarity Committee accused the "Israeli regime" of being "entirely responsible for all unfolding violence." The number of antisemitic incidents in the U.S. rose 361% in the three months following the attack.

The Hamas Covenant calls for Islam to "obliterate" Israel and to "vanquish" all Jews anywhere. Appeasement did not stop Hitler nor will it stop Hamas and its allies and sympathizers. Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia all recognized a Palestinian Arab state in September, without conditioning recognition on the defeat or disarmament of Hamas. That only strengthened Hamas supporters' belief that violence would pay dividends.

I don't often agree with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu's policies, either foreign or domestic. However, I can only acknowledge his foresight when he warned Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese four months before the Bondi Beach murders: "Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire. It rewards Hamas terrorists. It emboldens those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets."

Australia's greatest war hero, Sir John Monash, commander of the country's troops on the Western Front in World War I and a Jew himself, always denied that antisemitism existed in Australia. Times have changed. Two days after the Hamas attack on Israel in 2023, demonstrators marched through Sydney shouting "f—- the Jews." A year later a Melbourne synagogue was set on fire. A friend of mine, a prominent Australian, told me his country "is suffering from a dearth of leadership with morals." He believes Australian leaders are more interested in winning votes than doing what's right.

We Americans should feel no sense of superiority. Zohran Mamdani won election as New York City's 112th mayor last month. During his campaign, Mamdani defended the use of the phrase "globalize the intifada," words often understood to call for attacks on Jews everywhere. Harshly criticized for that position, he said he would not use the slogan himself and would "discourage" use of the slogan. He did not condemn it, however. He also refuses to recognize Israel's right to exist as a Jewish state.

I am willing to give Albanese and Mamdani the benefit of the doubt. They are presumably well-meaning politicians who want peace. But the road to peace did not run through Munich in 1939. Peace came only in 1945, after a war that destroyed the Nazi regime. By contrast, Albanese and Mamdani, even if unintentionally, have contributed to an atmosphere that enables violence against Jews.

Those who wish peace to come to Gaza should be advocating the utter defeat of Hamas and any other group that murders Jews because they are Jews or seeks to annihilate the Jewish state. They should not be rewarding terrorists and killers with recognition of a Palestinian Arab state even as Hamas murders its Gazan political opponents in the streets.

The attack in Sydney on Hanukkah is ironic. The miracle of Hanukkah is the defeat of a mighty empire by a small band of Jews who reestablished a Jewish state, the successor to the biblical kingdom of David and Solomon. The holiday celebrates self-defense and sovereignty. After 2,000 years of Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, Arab, Ottoman and British rule, Jews in 1948 again reestablished a Jewish state in the Holy Land. That's a modern-day miracle.

Peace in the Middle East demands reason, peaceful intentions and forceful action. Students, voters, diplomats, prime ministers, presidents and kings need to wake up. They must advocate and act to end the genocidal aims of Hamas and its supporters and proceed down a path to peace.

Even after facing the antisemitism of the medieval English, the czarist Russians, last century's Nazis and today's Hamas, Jews around the world can still say, "Am Yisrael chai" — the Jewish people live. That's another modern miracle even amidst the tragedy of this Hanukkah season.