More Antisemitic Violence

The Sunday shooting in Sydney, Australia is yet another attack on Jews although some in the lamestream media were slow to acknowledge that as we see in an article from Honest Reporting:

The terrorist attack on Sunday at Sydney’s Bondi Beach was grimly familiar. Another Jewish holiday. More innocent blood spilled. Once again, Jews were targeted for deadly violence for no reason other than being Jews.

The attack yesterday killed 15 people and injured dozens more. It could have been worse if not for a good Samaritan who wrestled down one of the two shooters. This was not an isolated attack:

This year alone, there has been a disturbing succession of attacks on Jews, many deliberately timed to moments of Jewish religious or communal significance.

On Yom Kippur, Judaism’s holiest day, Jews gathered at a synagogue in Manchester were targeted in a car-ramming and stabbing attack. On the eve of Shavuot, Jews peacefully assembled in Boulder, Colorado, to call for the release of Israeli hostages were firebombed. Shortly after hosting a Passover Seder, Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro and his family were forced to flee their home following an arson attack. In Washington, DC, Israeli embassy employees Sarah Milgrim and Yaron Lischinsky were murdered outside the Jewish Museum after attending a Yom Ha’atzmaut event.

The article even went back to 2023 since it, too was done on a Jewish celebration:

Even the massacre that triggered the war in Gaza, Hamas’s October 7, 2023, assault, was carried out on Simchat Torah.

Although the media would have you think these were not related to each other, they obviously leave out the elephant in the room:

These attacks are not random. Nor are they unconnected.

What links them is the world’s oldest hatred. Antisemitism may be repackaged for modern audiences, but its essence has not changed. Jews are targeted collectively and symbolically for who they are.

While the majority of news sites figured it out, some didn’t connect them with hatred of Jews:

In the immediate aftermath of the Bondi Beach attack, much of the media reported the basic facts accurately. Jews were murdered for being Jews. HonestReporting challenged outlets that hesitated to reflect the antisemitic nature of the attack in their headlines, and most corrected course.

Not So Fast

While most got it right they are missing something important:

But accuracy alone does not explain how a Hanukkah celebration became a crime scene.

To answer that question, we must confront the broader ecosystem that has allowed antisemitism to flourish, often under more palatable labels.

You see, by not consistently calling out antisemitism for what it is, those in the media have allowed it to happen:

Over the past several years, antisemitism has increasingly been indulged, minimized, or laundered under the banner of “anti-Zionism.” Language that once would have elicited near-universal condemnation, such as calls to “globalize the intifada,” was reframed as activism rather than incitement. Violent rhetoric was treated as metaphor, and media narratives repeatedly insisted that hostility toward Jews was really about politics, power, or policy, but never about Jews themselves.

This distinction has always been false.

When it is couched as political violence it is easier to condone:

When Jewish identity itself is framed as provocation, violence follows. It does not emerge spontaneously. It is taught, excused, and normalized until it manifests in bloodshed.

The very celebration of Hanukkah speaks to standing strong against opposition:

Hanukkah is the festival of light. It commemorates the refusal of Jews to abandon their identity in the face of intimidation and coercion. Its message is not abstract optimism, but persistence: light must be actively protected when darkness presses in. That is also the responsibility of journalism.

And the lamestream media needs to have their feet held to the fire more and more when they don’t report truthfully:

Holding the media accountable when antisemitism is obscured, euphemized, or excused is not alarmism. It is accountability, and it is why HonestReporting exists: to expose distortion, correct the historical record, and insist on clarity where others prefer ambiguity. The media helped create the conditions in which violence against Jews became foreseeable, not only through what it selectively reported, but through what it played down, reframed, or misrepresented.

Shining the light on this antisemitism needs to happen before the next attack, not after it happens again:

Light is not passive symbolism. It must be used. Journalism can illuminate hatred before it hardens into violence, not merely catalogue the damage once blood has been spilled. Having helped shape this climate, the media now bears responsibility for stopping its descent into darkness.

So, as we pray for the peace of Jerusalem we need to pray for victory on the 8th war front which is that of the news media. We need to deradicalize that mountain of influence more than ever.