Sydney showed what the West really thinks Jewish lives are worth - opinion

When I guide educational journeys to the extermination camps in Poland, I often ask participants to think about Abraham, a boy from a Jewish shtetl who was murdered during the Khmelnytsky pogroms, amid a Ukrainian peasants’ revolt against the Polish nobility. He had no idea what the war was about, no real connection to it, yet he was marked as the ultimate enemy.

Beyond the personal and national tragedy, this attack reflects the condition of Jews in the world seventy-eight years after the Holocaust. We need to face reality honestly, without denial: Jewish lives are increasingly treated as expendable in Western societies.

Since World War II, the West has lived in a state of “post” consciousness: post-World War, post-colonialism, and post-Holocaust. One of the key consequences was the belief that antisemitism had been pushed beyond the boundaries of legitimacy.

But since the early 2000s, we have seen a growing transfer of guilt over colonialism and the Holocaust away from Jews and onto Muslims. The West constructed a convenient and deeply flawed narrative: that all problems related to immigration and radical Islam would be resolved if only Israelis and Palestinians made peace. In recent years, with the strengthening of the red-green alliance between progressives and Islamists, that narrative has shifted. Now, the very existence of the Jewish state itself is portrayed as the root of the problem.

Until October 7, this view remained largely on the margins. But that alliance, fueled by Iranian, Qatari, and Chinese influence, built strong infrastructures and gained an increasing foothold within intellectual elites, labor unions, and left-wing political parties.

Ironically, October 7, the largest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, unleashed enormous energy within this movement. In its direct aftermath came a tsunami of protests, boycotts, lawsuits, and violence directed at Israel. Alongside it came an eruption of antisemitism. To their shock, Jews, including many liberals, quickly realized that the blend of radical movements entering the mainstream was reviving antisemitic narratives, some familiar, others newly repackaged.

An unprecedented wave of hostility penetrated institutions that confer legitimacy, while Western governments failed to grasp the scale and intensity of the storm. To this must be added the collapse of the assumption that “the far right supports Israel,” a notion now clearly disproven in the United States, from Tucker Carlson to Nick Fuentes and others.

Australia represents an extreme case of governmental paralysis under the Labor government, combined with its own flirtation with antisemitism, leading to a disaster that was entirely foreseeable and to the horrific tragedy at Bondi Beach.

The State of Israel was founded as the nation-state of the Jewish people. We must deepen our commitment to, and alliance with, Jewish communities around the world.

That commitment must flow in two directions. First, Israel must strive to be a model state that Jews everywhere would want to come to: a safe, prosperous, and just country that communicates, through both words and actions, that Jews across the world are wanted and valued.

Second, Israel must recognize the importance of Jewish life in the diaspora. This means enabling meaningful involvement of world Jewry as true stakeholders in the State of Israel, engaging all streams and communities in dialogue, and offering spiritual, physical, and, where necessary, economic support. Above all, it requires taking into account our brothers and sisters overseas when shaping policy toward the wider world.

The current government, however, or any narrow coalition, is not equipped to confront challenges of this magnitude. The future of the Jewish people is at stake, and we are trapped in a toxic dynamic of fragmentation rather than one of repair. A dynamic of repair that could, among other things, create the conditions for hundreds of thousands of Jews to come to Israel in the coming decade and for millions more to feel pride in their national home, wherever they may live.