Arlene Kushner | Dec 15, 2025
The Lights and Bondi Beach!
“We are the eternal people…The Chanukah lights must go on all over the world…The Jewish people will continue to bring light all over the world and overcome this terrible darkness.”
So declared President Yitzhak Herzog in a message to the people of Australia, following a horrendous terror attack on Bondi Beach, Sydney, where there was a large gathering in celebration of Chanukah. (More on this below.)
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/419310
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Last night we began Chanukah, lighting the first light. The lighting of the Chanukiah each night for eight nights – one more light each night – is the central part of our observance of the holiday. In some years it carries particular significance, as it becomes a symbol of strength and resilience. This is such a year.
Dov Harrington
We light the lights because of the miracle described in the Talmud: The Maccabees regained control of the Temple from the Seleucids (Syrian-Greeks) in approximately 165 BCE; this was a major turning point in the course of a long war against the Hellenistic Seleucid Empire of Antiochus IV, which vigorously repressed Jewish practice. The Temple had been defiled – having been used for pagan purposes – and had to be rededicated. The Maccabees found only one cruse of oil that was still pure and used it to light the menorah. It should have been enough for only one day yet miraculously lasted for eight days.
That was the miracle.
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But there is another story, told in the Books of Maccabees One and Two and by the Jewish historian Josephus; this is the story of the miracle of the continued existence of the Jewish people in the face of eons of persecution. The miracle of the Jews as an eternal people. In the story of the fighting waged by the Maccabees over the course of many years, we find lessons for today.
The first part of the war the Maccabees fought was essentially a civil war within the Jewish community. There were those who continued to identify as Jews nominally but were attracted by the Hellenistic culture and embraced values very different from Jewish values. It was Matityahu, a priest in Modiin, who stabbed a Hellenized Jew who was about to offer a pagan sacrifice. He and his five sons – ultimately led by Judah, the eldest, who became known as a Maccabee (a hammer) – fled into the Judean Hills, followed by other Jews loyal to Judaism and the Covenant.
Today we as Jews are called upon to understand clearly who we are, what our history is, and what values we stand for. We cannot be strong for ourselves without this understanding. Sadly today many are attracted to cultural values and practices that undermine their sense of themselves as Jews.
In the face of unremitting anti-Semitism, the most solid response is one of embracing our identity with pride and enduring commitment.
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And then there was the larger war against the Seleucids, a war of many years length and much sacrifice. Without this, Judaism would have been swallowed up. What the Maccabees did serves as a model of determination and perseverance.
We are indeed in the midst of a terrible time. But we Israelis know that in the end we will prevail.
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As I write, there are at least 15 reported killed in the Bondi Beach massacre. Over 40 have been wounded, some critically.
Those who fell include much-loved Rabbi Eli Schlanger, assistant rabbi of Chabad of Bondi, in Sydney. He left five children including a baby of two months. Nor was he was the only rabbi killed.
Chabad
Also shot dead were a 10-year-old girl, named Matilda, and Alex Kleytman an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor.
Courtesy
You can see more here:
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The perpetrators of the attack, which was carried out from a nearby bridge, were a father, who has been shot dead, and a son, who is unconscious in the hospital. They were Islamists of Pakistani origins (the father came from Pakistan, the son was born in Australia).
Much criticism has come from Israel – including from the prime minister and the Mossad – because of warnings conveyed to the Australian government of an imminent attack. Warnings which the authorities did not fully heed. The Mossad notified Australian intelligence about a month ago that Iranian-backed terrorists in the country planned to carry out attacks on Jewish targets. Now, after the fact, the involvement of Iran is being investigated.
It has been noted that the Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese did not mention the Jewish community specifically when lamenting the attack.
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I read yesterday that Ivanka Trump, daughter of the president, in light of the attack in Bondi Beach, spoke about the need for bringing “more compassion, integrity, and holiness into the world.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/419329
Evan Vucci/AP
Well, we can say that she meant well, I suppose. But a good deal of clarity is called for here.
It was her mention of compassion, which came first for her, that got to me.
Compassion?
I would sincerely hope that she did not mean compassion for terrorists or potential terrorists, that she does not imagine that more “kindness” offered to radical Islamists would moderate them and bring a better world, a world in which fewer Jews were attacked. But it is possible that she does think this way, as her father advances a policy based on trying to create more prosperous conditions for radicals in the very mistaken belief that this will moderate their hate-filled ideology.
I would remind her of what is written in the Midrash (Tanchuma): He who is compassionate to the cruel will ultimately become cruel to the compassionate.
Show leniency or kindness to those doing evil, and the evil-doers in time will be strengthened and able to do harm to compassionate individuals.
What is needed, desperately, is justice.
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But perhaps Ivanka was thinking about compassion on the part of non-Jews for Jews who suffer violence. This brings to my mind that truism about the world loving dead Jews.
We Jews have sufficient compassion for our own, thank you. And we are grateful for the compassion of those who genuinely stand with us.
As to the rest of the world, what passes as compassion is vile hypocrisy – for the world generates the very conditions that bring Jewish suffering.
And with the attack on Bondi Beach it is way past time to cry ENOUGH!
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Wrote Gary Willig today (emphasis added):
“Two years ago, on October 7, 2023, a crowd gathered in the city of Sydney, Australia, to celebrate the massacre of Jews that had been committed in southern Israel October 7 and to call for more such massacres in front of the Sydney Opera House. Videos from the gathering appeared to show celebrants chanting ‘gas the Jews,’ among other violently antisemitic mantras.
“Somehow, the Sydney police took the same video that seemed very clear to the rest of the world and determined that the entire world was wrong, and what was said as actually ‘where’s the Jews,’ as if that somehow made it any better.
“The Jews were found – less than ten kilometers away on December 14, 2025, celebrating the start of the Hanukkah holiday at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, where two terrorists opened fire on Jewish families, murdering at least 16 innocent people as of press time.
“Over the last two years, the kind of evil that was committed at Bondi Beach was coddled, excused, pandered to, downplayed, and denied by Western leaders and media outlets who refused to recognize that celebrating the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust is not an act of righteous anger, but an act of genocidal hatred.
“…Every chant of ‘Globalize the Intifada’ was a call for massacres like the Sydney Hanukkah Massacre.
“…For two years, we’ve begged leaders, university officials, and media outlets to take the post-October 7 explosion of antisemitism seriously, only to watch as university administrations folded in the face of Nazi-level hate. Leaders across the West competed to see who could get the most votes from the ‘let’s kill all the Jews’ demographic, and the mainstream media treated not only calls for a second Holocaust, but outright violence against Jews as legitimate free speech.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/419366
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And Italian journalist Giulio Meotti has written this (emphasis added):
“…The West continues to believe that being nice is enough to disarm fanaticism, and that openness is a sufficient shield against those who consider openness a weakness to exploit…
“Australia-this archipelago of eternal Peter Pans raised among beaches and Sunday barbecues-has cultivated a lineage of adult-children, optimistic by constitution, cocky by habit, convinced that the world is a big playground with soft rules and benevolent referees. The Westerner who has developed a naïve trust in others: the neighbor is always a mate, the different one a future friend after a beer, danger something that happens on television.
“But Islamic integralism is not a playground bully: it is an ontological abyss that demands submission or death…
“Australia is the scene of threatening anti-Zionist and antisemitic demonstrations for the past two years…
“But nobody stopped them and so they didn’t stop there…
“Australia is the country that hosts the largest percentage of Holocaust survivors outside Israel, and antisemitism is now out of control.
“Among them and the rest of Australian Jews there is a sense of abandonment in a country where multiculturalism has always been a party…
“The West continues to believe that being nice is enough to disarm fanaticism, and that openness is a sufficient shield against those who consider openness a weakness to exploit.
“The followers of this new antisemitic magma do not give the Nazi salute, do not goose-step, and do not wear black shirts. They march at ‘peace’ rallies in colorful T-shirts and friendship bracelets between peoples, alongside those who shout ‘Allahu Akbar.’ A monster grown among those who do not know they are fragile, yet continue to turn the other cheek and believe that dialogue can enchant those who have already chosen death as their final argument.
“In Sydney there had just been the stabbing of the Assyrian bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel during an Orthodox mass.
“First the Assyrian Christians, then the Jews of Bondi, and who knows tomorrow. People weep, but multicultural tears do not wash away the blood shed by radical Islam for the political cowardice of those who are too innocent to recognize evil when it does not wear the uniform of a cartoon villain.
“The lucky West must awaken, or its sun will soon set in a twilight of terror.”
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/419314
Goodreads
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Tonight I said the blessings and lit my second candle, as did the Jews of Sydney, many hours earlier. The celebration of Chanukah goes on!
I wish all who are celebrating a Chanukah Sameach! And I close with a video of the IDF Military Rabbinate Band performing a medley of Chanukah songs.
https://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/419312
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Please, pray for all of Am Yisrael: for the wisdom and courage of our leaders, the strength of our people, and an awakening of the Western world to the horrors of radical Islam.
©Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by independent journalist Arlene Kushner. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
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