Appeasement’s bitter harvest in Bondi

When terror is excused abroad, it strikes at home

I was putting the finishing touches to an article I intended to publish today when the news broke from Sydney. Bondi Beach. Hanukkah. Gunfire. Chaos. Lives cut short in a place meant for light, joy, and community. I froze, mouth agape, heart heavy. My thoughts immediately turned to the families who will never again hear a familiar laugh or feel a loved one’s embrace. Nothing I write can ease their pain, but silence would feel like surrender.

What struck me most was not only the horror of the attack itself, but its grim familiarity. We have seen this movie before. We watched it on October 7. We have replayed it in Paris, Brussels, Buenos Aires, Mumbai, and now Sydney. Different cities, same hatred. Different excuses, same outcome. And yet, the West still seems determined to learn nothing.

Australia was long considered one of the safer corners of the Jewish world. That illusion has now been shattered. The statistics tell a chilling story: more than 1,600 antisemitic incidents in a single year, firebombed synagogues, vandalized homes, threats against schools, and finally, the unthinkable – gunmen opening fire on a Hanukkah celebration. This was not an isolated act of madness. It was the violent crescendo of years of normalization, indulgence, and appeasement.

I write this not in anger alone, but in sorrow. Sorrow for the dead. Sorrow for Australian Jews who now wonder if the country they loved still loves them back. And sorrow for a Western political class that continues to confuse moral posturing with moral clarity.

Let me be clear: sympathizing with Palestinian civilians is not the problem. Criticizing Israeli policy is not the problem. Democracies thrive on debate. But there is a bright red line between criticism and incitement, between compassion and capitulation. Too many Western governments crossed that line after October 7, rewarding terror with recognition, excuses, and diplomatic theatre. They called it balance. Terrorists heard encouragement.

I have written about this before, and I do so again with a heavy heart. When Australia, France, the UK, and Canada rushed to recognize a phantom Palestinian state in the middle of a war triggered by Hamas barbarity, they did not advance peace. They sent a message. That message was simple and devastating: violence works. Kill enough Jews, hold enough hostages, terrorize enough civilians, and the world will bend.

Bondi Beach is where that logic ends up.

The slogans that flooded Western streets over the past two years – “Globalize the Intifada,” “Resistance by any means necessary,” “From the river to the sea” – were not harmless chants. They were dress rehearsals. When leaders tolerated them, minimized them, or worse, echoed their moral framing, they mainstreamed a hatred that has always known exactly where it was headed.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry put it starkly: antisemitism has moved from the fringes into the mainstream. Universities, cultural spaces, workplaces, even healthcare settings – once neutral ground – have become arenas of intimidation. When hatred is normalized, violence is never far behind.

And let us not pretend this is spontaneous. Iran’s fingerprints are everywhere. From Buenos Aires in 1994 to Melbourne in 2024, from Hezbollah proxies to Hamas financiers, Tehran’s export of terror is methodical and global. That Iran could condemn the Bondi attack without mentioning Jews or antisemitism is almost a parody of cynicism. It condemns violence in theory while sponsoring it in practice.

Yet even here, I push back against despair, for it is a luxury I have never known, and one the Jewish people have never been allowed.

What gives me strength – what always does – is Israel. Not as an abstract state, but as a living answer to history. While the West ties itself in knots, Israel has learned the hard way that appeasement is not a strategy; it is an invitation. October 7 burned that lesson into the national consciousness once more. And Israel responded the only way it knows how: with resilience and renewal.

This phrase is not rhetorical flourish. It is a lived reality. Israelis mourn deeply, and then they build. They bury their dead, and then they invent. They defend themselves not only with weapons, but with ideas – with technology, medicine, and a stubborn insistence on life.

That is what it means to be innovating the future of Israel.

While Western capitals argue over wording and optics, Israeli scientists are developing trauma therapies for victims of terror. Israeli engineers are refining early-warning systems that save lives far beyond Israel’s borders. Israeli entrepreneurs are building platforms that strengthen civil society even under fire. This is not denial of pain; it is defiance of it.

To Australian Jews reading this, know this: you are not alone. Your grief is shared. Your fear is understood. Your resilience is admired. Jewish history did not begin in Bondi, and it will not end there. You have endured expulsions, pogroms, ghettos, and genocide. You have also rebuilt, again and again, often in places that once swore “never again.”

To Australians of goodwill, I say this gently but firmly: this is your moment of truth. Not with platitudes, but with policy. Not with hashtags, but with consequences. Hatred must be confronted early, loudly, and without apology. Appeasement does not buy peace; it mortgages safety.

And to Western leaders everywhere: stop confusing weakness with virtue. Moral clarity is not colonialism. Self-defense is not extremism. Standing with Israel against terror is not warmongering – it is the minimum requirement of a civilization that claims to stand for human life.

History is watching, as it always does. It watched in the 1930s. It watched on October 7. And now it watches again, from a bloodstained beach in Sydney.

Israel has learned what the West keeps forgetting: when evil is indulged, it grows. When it is confronted, it retreats. Israel will continue to confront it – not because it loves war, but because it loves life.

That is why, even on a day like this, I choose hope. Not naive hope, but hard-earned hope. The kind forged in adversity. The kind rooted in resilience and renewal. The kind that insists that even after terror, even after loss, the Jewish people – and the Jewish state – will keep building a future that refuses to be dictated by hatred.

May the memories of the victims be a blessing. And may their deaths awaken the conscience of a West that can no longer afford to sleepwalk through history.