AHA Foundation Condemns Attack on Jewish Community in Sydney, Australia and the Normalization of Terror

12/14/2025

It seems as if a week cannot pass without the Western world experiencing the horrors of Islamic terror. Thankfully, Bavarian police arrested four Muslim men this weekend before they could carry out an attack on a Christmas market similar to the 2024 attack on a Christmas market in Magdeburg that killed six and injured 300 more. 

But Australian Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach this morning were not so fortunate. The earliest reports say that two gunmen opened fire on the group and killed at least twelve. 

Is this just what we should expect in the West from now on? Each time violence erupts like this, our societies adjust to what we are called to recognize as a “new normal.” 

Barriers, security lines, and headcount limits are now imposed at public events across Europe, the United States, and the wider West. Every traveler is subjected to inconvenient and intense security screening in airports post-9/11. And, most offensively, our Jewish friends and neighbors simply cannot risk relaxing their vigilance even for a moment lest they be attacked merely for being Jews. Their places of worship are vulnerable, their schools are vulnerable, and even their public holiday gatherings are vulnerable. 

All of this happens while feckless politicians across the West cower in fear lest they be labeled Islamophobic. Somehow, being perceived as racist is worse than real violence and dead Jews.

Ayaan Hirsi Ali has been sounding the alarm from the first moments of her public life in the West. The assassination of her anti-Islamist collaborator and friend Theo van Gogh more than 20 years ago was not, unfortunately, interpreted as a vindication of her warnings. 

Since that time, we have naively been asking how to make the West safe for Jews and other potential victims of Jihadist violence. The question that we should have been asking from the very beginning is how to make the West inhospitable and even openly hostile to this type of antisemitic, antiliberal, and antidemocratic violence. 

We cannot begin to imagine the anguish of the victims of this latest attack. They’ve lost friends and loved ones on the first day of the observance of Hanukkah and this will surely cause Jews around the world ever-increasing anxiety. While they live peacefully alongside those who intend them harm, so many of their neighbors are willing to tolerate the threat posed to their lives and to their community’s very existence.

We cannot expect a civilization to flourish when there is so little courage at its core to confront evil in defense of the vulnerable. AHA Foundation stands in solidarity with the Jewish community in Australia that has experienced this indescribable tragedy. And we empathize with our Jewish friends and neighbors around the world who are justified in feeling more exposed, fearful, and alone. We cannot accept that this is your “new normal” and pledge every effort to work toward a future that is more peaceful and more secure for you and for all of us.