Israel at War: Week 114

On Sunday, December 14, a father and son together opened fire on Jewish participants in a “Hanukkah on the Beach” event. They left behind 15 dead and 43 wounded. Authorities, including Prime Minister Albanese called it a “targeted attack against Jewish Australians.” Prime Minister Netanyahu suggested to Jewish people that Israel protects the Jewish people. Clearly urging Jewish people around the world to return to Israel, the homeland of the Jewish people.

New York City mayor Eric Adams said that we are seeing the globalizing of the Intifada. He is right, for in addition to the incident in Sydney, 22 pro-Palestinian protestors stood outside the Royal Concert Hall in Amsterdam. “The dozens of anti-Israel protestors, who cited the performance of a cantor who serves in the Israel Defense Forces as the reason for the demonstration.”

On the campus of Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island at a Jewish Professor’s Economics review session, a gunman left 2 dead and nine wounded. At this time the perpetrator is still at large.

A Chabad rabbi in Utah said, “It is chilling to realize what the attackers were trying to do. They chose this moment because they wanted to send fear across the world. They wanted Jews everywhere to think twice before gathering, before singing, before shining their light.”

But they failed! For Hanukkah holiday events took place in spite of the attacks and protests, forming a modern application to the Hanukkah account. As Daniel 11:32 says of the original participants of the Hanukkah conflict, the Maccabees, “they who do know their God shall do exploits.” So the current anti-Semitic attacks will only serve to strengthen and steel Jewish resolve to survive and thrive wherever anti-Semitic attacks occur.

Please keep the families of the murdered victims and those wounded in the attacks in prayer.

(The Times of Israel; Jewish News Syndicate)