Reassurance is not protection. Clarity is

By morning, the language was already familiar. Tragic. Shocking. Unthinkable. The words arrive quickly, polished and empty, designed to close the event rather than confront it. 

For Jews, the night in Sydney does not end with the headlines. It never does. It simply joins a long sequence of nights the world insists should have been impossible.

Calling it “unthinkable” is the final luxury of those who do not have to think this way. Jews do.

Being Jewish today means understanding that violence does not need novelty to be lethal. It only needs permission—permission granted through denial, minimization, and the constant insistence that this time is different. It rarely is.

Jews are told they are safe. Then they are murdered. They are told they are powerful. Then they are hunted. They are told history has progressed. Then history repeats itself with updated vocabulary and better public relations.

This is not fear. It is recognition.

For years, Jews were encouraged to believe that antisemitism had been disarmed by modernity. When it resurfaced, we were told it was marginal. 

When it spread, we were told it was exaggerated. When it turned violent, we were told to contextualize it. And when Jews are killed, the conversation pivots almost instantly—away from hatred and toward explanation.

There is always an explanation. Rarely is there accountability.

What does it mean to be Jewish after one more “unthinkable” night? It means knowing that Jewish suffering is uniquely conditional. It is acknowledged only if it can be neatly isolated, quickly mourned, and carefully stripped of implication. 

The moment it suggests a pattern, discomfort sets in. The moment Jews draw conclusions, we are accused of overreach.

Yet patterns are precisely what Jews are not allowed to ignore.

Antisemitism does not erupt out of nowhere. It incubates in plain sight—on campuses, in media, in political movements that insist Jews are both omnipotent and illegitimate. It grows louder when it is excused, and bolder when it is rationalized. By the time it turns violent, it has already been rehearsed.

Jews know this because we have lived it, repeatedly.

Being Jewish today also means rejecting the moral demand to be reassuring. Jews are expected to universalize their pain, to soften their language, to prove they are not exploiting tragedy. No such burden is placed on others. Jewish grief must be brief, tasteful, and silent about consequences.

But silence has never protected Jews.

There is an uncomfortable truth many prefer not to face: when Jews are attacked, it is not an isolated malfunction of an otherwise healthy society. 

It is a diagnostic moment. Antisemitism is not just another hatred; it is an early warning system. Societies that tolerate it are already unraveling, whether they admit it or not.

After one more “unthinkable” night, being Jewish means refusing to be surprised. It means refusing to be lectured about proportionality while counting the dead. It means refusing to accept that this is inexplicable, unforeseeable, or disconnected from what came before.

Jews do not need more statements of concern. We do not need reassurance that values remain intact. We have heard all of this before, usually just before the next failure.

What is required now is not sentiment but clarity. Not condemnation after the fact, but courage before the next one.

History is not whispering. It is repeating itself at full volume.

It must also be said: gratitude is due to our brothers in the Arab world who condemned this attack clearly and without equivocation. 

At a time when moral clarity is too often blurred or withheld, those voices mattered. They remind us that this is not a clash of peoples or cultures, but a struggle between those who accept the murder of innocents and those who refuse to normalize it. Such condemnation does not erase grief—but it affirms a shared humanity that violence seeks, and fails, to destroy.

The only question left is who will pretend not to hear it.