Or Moshe is a student at Reichman University in Israel and a fellow in its Argov Program in Leadership and Diplomacy.
For years, Jews have been warning that something is breaking. That the ground beneath our feet no longer feels stable. That the threats we were told belonged to history were not gone, only dormant. Too often, those warnings were dismissed as anxiety, trauma or an inability to let go of the past.
They were not.
What has changed is not the existence of antisemitism, but its intensity, its visibility and the speed at which it moves from words to violence. What once hid behind anonymity now plays out in public spaces, in democratic societies, in countries that pride themselves on tolerance and rule of law.
Jews are not just being insulted or intimidated. Jews are being attacked, targeted and killed in acts of antisemitic violence around the world.
In Australia, this escalation became impossible to ignore at Bondi Beach. During a Jewish Hanukkah gathering, armed attackers opened fire in daylight. People ran for their lives. Families were torn apart. What should have been a moment of joy turned into a scene of terror and bloodshed.
When Jews can be shot for celebrating a holiday, the meaning is unmistakable. Antisemitic violence no longer waits for shadows. It arrives openly, violently and without apology.
And it is escalating.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, the threshold has dropped. What once required masks and anonymity now often requires none. What once drew universal condemnation now frequently draws explanation. The distance between speech and violence has narrowed, and Jews feel it every day.
Fear is no longer episodic. It is ambient.
This month in Jackson, Mississippi, a synagogue was set ablaze. Jewish schools operate behind gates and armed guards, not as a temporary response, but as a permanent reality. Jewish institutions design their budgets around security before anything else. Even in the smallest details of daily life, fear intrudes. We feel the danger when we leave our homes. We feel it when we decide what to wear. We change our names on ride-share apps because we are afraid of what might happen if we don’t. We think twice before posting family photos from a synagogue event.
This is what it means to live with the knowledge that your identity can make you a target.
I have seen this reality not only as a Jew, but through two years of work in the international department of the Hostages and Missing Families Forum, a group established in Israel after the Oct. 7 attack. During that time, I engaged with diplomats, foreign officials, decision-makers and journalists, and sat in rooms where Jewish suffering was discussed carefully, cautiously and often conditionally. I saw families whose loved ones were kidnapped, tortured and murdered have to argue for empathy.
I have learned something painful and consistent. Jewish pain is rarely allowed to stand on its own.
Instead, it is weighed. Qualified. Contextualized. Explained away. Violence against Jews is treated as a reaction rather than an atrocity. Fear is treated as an exaggeration. Mourning is treated as politics.
At what point did being Jewish make grief negotiable?
Some will argue that today’s violence is driven by anger over Israeli policy or civilian deaths in the Gaza war. It is understandable to acknowledge human suffering in Gaza and to demand a future of dignity and safety for its people. But political disagreement, however fierce, does not justify shooting at Jewish homes, attacking synagogues or terrorizing Jewish children. Jews around the world do not command Israeli policy, nor do they serve as its proxies. Holding Jews collectively responsible for the actions of a government one disagrees with is not protest. It is antisemitism.
Antisemitism today does not always look like the caricatures people expect. It does not always announce itself with slurs or symbols. Sometimes it presents itself as moral clarity. It claims righteousness while denying Jews the right to safety, dignity and self-defense. It insists that Jewish fear is suspicious. That Jewish vulnerability is strategic. That Jewish deaths require footnotes.
And the most dangerous part of this moment is how quickly it is normalized. How easily societies adjust. How readily people accept that the violence is complicated.
But Jews know better.
We know what it means when violence is minimized. We know what it means when threats are tolerated until they become irreversible. We know what it means when the world hesitates to act until it’s too late.
These are not anecdotes. They are adaptations. They are the lived consequences of a world that failed to confront antisemitism while there was still time to contain it.
We are at a crossroads.
One path leads to complacency. We explain away attacks as political fallout. We argue definitions while fear spreads. History shows where that path leads.
The other path demands courage.
It demands that antisemitism be named without apology. That Jewish fear be taken seriously. That violence against Jews should not be tolerated under any ideological cover. That democratic societies recognize a basic truth.
When Jews are not safe, something fundamental is breaking.
We are not asking for special treatment. We are asking for safety. For clarity. For the right to exist without fear.
Bondi was not an anomaly. The shots fired at Jewish homes were not anomalies. The guards at school gates are not anomalies.
They are warnings.
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