The Hanukkah attack in Sydney was a terrorist act driven by antisemitism. It should force democracies to confront how years of indulging antisemitic intimidation have blurred the line between political criticism and targeted menace. Protecting vigorous debate about Gaza is essential. But so is restoring a moral and institutional clarity that condemns harassment, dehumanization, and the laundering of violence as “speech.” The failure to do so, the laxity, has made real-world attacks commonplace.
Start with the obvious, because it has been avoided. Jews celebrating a religious holiday were targeted not only to kill, but to broadcast fear. Terrorism aims far beyond its immediate victims. It signals to a minority that public presence carries danger.
Yet, almost immediately, the attack was reframed as a threat to free speech. Any strong reaction, we were told, would be used to silence criticism of Israel’s war in Gaza. This sounds like a defense of liberal values, but it functions as a diversion. It shifts attention away from what has been happening since October 7: not an expansion of democratic debate, but the normalization of antisemitic intimidation under the cover of political passion.
Criticism of Israel is legitimate and necessary. Democracies must allow sharp, even unsettling arguments. But over the past two years, political language has repeatedly been used to erase distinctions liberal societies depend on: between arguing about policies and menacing people; between condemning a state and treating Jews everywhere as its proxies; between protest that seeks persuasion and intimidation that seeks retreat.
Context: The line between criticism of Israel and antisemitism
The erosion of these distinctions has been reframed as moral sophistication. Universities invoke “context,” while Jewish students learn to conceal their symbols – and themselves. Civic leaders praise “passionate engagement” while Jewish institutions quietly increase security. Jewish fear is treated not as a social fact, but as a political machination.
Free speech protects criticism of states, including Israel, but it does not require moral abdication. It does not oblige institutions to treat intimidation as debate or to dignify the glorification of civilian slaughter as political expression. A society that cannot distinguish between critique and coercion is not pluralistic. It is evasive.
The difference is not complex. Speech aimed at policy belongs in democratic argument. Speech aimed at driving a minority out of public life is social coercion. Speech that seeks persuasion belongs in debate. Speech that seeks to intimidate or dehumanize is unacceptable, even when it borrows from the language of politics.
When institutions refuse to draw these lines, they shield impunity. And impunity teaches. It teaches that antisemitism, if packaged as activism, will be tolerated until someone else pays the price.
Sydney is a reminder that the price is not abstract. Terrorism does not emerge in a vacuum. It is nourished by atmospheres. When dehumanizing rhetoric becomes routine and violent fantasies are excused as resistance, the barrier between saying and doing weakens. Not every ugly chant leads to violence. But tolerating them blurs the moral boundary that makes violence harder to justify.
The real danger is not that democracies will suddenly overreact. It is that they have underreacted for too long. The correction needed is not one of censorship, but of clarity. One can advocate fiercely for Palestinians without endorsing violence. One can condemn Israeli policy without transferring that condemnation onto Jews at home. Protest remains compatible with pluralism only when it does not make minority participation unsafe.
Sydney should not be used to shut down legitimate criticism of Israel. But it should end the pretense that antisemitic intimidation, when cloaked in politics, deserves a pass. Democracies that want both robust debate and public safety must protect argument, confront intimidation, and stop pretending the line between the two cannot be drawn.
The writer is a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute (JPPI) and a professor of European studies and international relations in the Department of Politics and Government at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev.