This article originally appeared in Israel Hayom on December 17, 2025.
The massacre perpetrated in Sydney against hundreds of Jews celebrating Hanukkah proves once again that Islamists are waging a religious war against the people of Israel and against all non-believers in the West. They consistently choose a Jewish or Christian holiday to commit barbaric attacks. The security failures of the Australian authorities are glaring. For several long minutes, the terrorists fired on the crowd without any police intervention. The worst was averted thanks to the audacity of a passerby, a courageous Muslim; he fought one of the terrorists and managed to seize his hunting rifle…
From Osama bin Laden’s planned attack in New York on September 11, 2001, to the present day, Western nations have remained unable to eradicate the scourge of Islamist terror. Numerous attacks have been thwarted thanks to invaluable intelligence provided by Mossad to various intelligence services. Without these warnings, the list of Islamist attacks in Europe and Australia would have been longer and more deadly, targeting innocent men, women, and children.
Encouraged, trained, and financed by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, terrorist cells from Hamas, Islamic Jihad, and Hezbollah operate with impunity across all continents. Since October 7, 2023, they have been taking advantage of American restraint and European disarray. Worse still, Western powers are allowing pro-Palestinian demonstrations in the streets in the name of “freedom of expression.” Chancelleries in Europe are working by all diplomatic means to create a Palestinian state. Are they unaware that their actions indirectly fuel anti-Semitic waves and sow terror? Are they so masochistic or so naive? Why this indifference to the just cause of the Jewish state? This “collusion” with the devil?
There is no difference between the Palestinian Hamas terrorists and all the Shiite and Sunni terrorists who perpetrate attacks in Sydney, Washington, Manchester, or Paris. They all wish to create Islamic states in place of the Jewish state and Christian countries. Even today, Saladin remains a hero of Islam, the great victor over the Crusaders in 1187. Why turn a deaf ear, why ignore the words of Islamist leaders who clearly declare in Arabic: “Our goal is to mobilize the Muslim masses for the conquest again of Jerusalem”?
The attack in Sydney on the first day of Hanukkah symbolizes our age-old struggle against evil. We light candles to dispel darkness and obscurantism, and to illuminate the fundamental values of Judaism. Members of the Loubavitch movement were targeted once again. Islamist barbarians premeditatedly murdered representatives of Chabad, the Hebrew acronym for wisdom, intelligence, and knowledge.
We have no choice but to continue our tireless fight against the cult of death. It is our collective destiny, for better or for worse. For over a century, we have been fighting the scourge of Palestinian terrorism, and every day we thwart planned attacks and every night we arrest those who commission them, perpetrators, and suspects.
The Jewish state is therefore acting in legitimate self-defense and has the absolute right to wage a fight, without pity and without mercy, against all enemies of all kinds, against all those who want to wipe us off the map, whether they are Palestinian or Iranian.
No moral lessons, especially from Europe, and from France in particular, nor any condemnation will be able to prevent the Israeli government from continuing, with the support of the IDF, the Shin Bet, and the Mossad, the fight against the scourge of terrorism in Gaza, Damascus, Beirut, or Tehran.
The waves of antisemitism and acts of terror cannot be eradicated without an international strategy. It’s not enough to simply increase police presence outside synagogues and community centers, organize mourning ceremonies, or express solidarity after each attack; these are merely empty words and fine expressions. What’s needed is concrete action through draconian laws, including freezing bank accounts and cracking down on incitement to hatred of Jews in the streets and mosques.
