The lights are twinkling once again on the giant Christmas tree in Bethlehem’s Manger Square after a two-year blackout, but all that glisters is not gold. In the city where the baby whom Christians call the Saviour was born in a stable, children are going hungry amid the West Bank’s worst economic crisis in at least half a century. Israel’s bombardment of Gaza since October 2023 precipitated the suspension of celebratory events in the West Bank – including weddings and religious milestones – in sympathy with Palestine’s besieged kindred.
In Australia last weekend, other people were unknowingly tasting their last latkes in celebration of Hanukkah when two men riddled them with gunfire on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. A child of 10 with her face painted for a party was among 16 people who died, including one of the perpetrators. They had targeted their victims, simply and grotesquely, because they were Jewish. Reports that police found Islamic State flags in the alleged gunmen’s car have raised concerns about a potential Islamaphobic backlash.
Hatred is splintering our world, and there is scant hope of stemming it while those who foster it are allowed to play the innocent. After Saturday’s massacre, Israel’s prime minister blamed the Australian government’s recognition of Palestinian statehood for spreading anti-Semitism. But Binyamin Netanyahu is far from faultless. His and his ministers’ constant accusations of anti-Semitism against critics of his war on Gaza have defused the unique vileness conveyed by a word engraved on millions upon millions of history’s headstones.
Netanyahu has said he warned his Australian counterpart, Anthony Albanese, in August that formal recognition of Palestine would encourage “Jew hatred”. Never has he acknowledged that his own government’s actions in Gaza might be exploited by extremists as a reason for their terrorism.
READ MORE
The state of Israel is not Jewish people. Jewish people are not the state of Israel, no more than Irish people were the IRA when castigated by association during the Troubles. Equally, the people of Gaza are not Hamas. But hatred has no respect for logic. The father and son who unleashed murder on Bondi chose hate. The world has rightly united in revulsion. Yet allowing their senseless wickedness to let the Israeli government off the hook would be an injustice to the dead and to those who go on living.
Last Saturday, Netanyahu and his defence minister Israel Katz ordered the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) to launch an air strike in Gaza despite a so-called ceasefire. The strike killed a Hamas commander, Ra’ad Sa’ad, and three other people. By Sunday, 391 people had reportedly been killed and 1,063 injured in the Strip since the ceasefire began on October 11th. A Yellow Line barring entry by Gazans has been creeping beyond its agreed limit and ever closer to urban areas now largely ruined. Most of the surviving Gazans – more than two million people – are being herded into a “red zone” occupying roughly two-fifths of Gaza, which was already one of the most densely populated places on Earth before the onslaught commenced. A “green zone” designated for Israeli control has grown from the agreed 53 per cent to 58 per cent. A watching world has kept schtum about it all for fear of scuppering a ceasefire that is flagrantly failing to cease the firing. As if a few hundred dead people is an acceptable quid pro quo for suspending an onslaught that has annihilated more than 71,000 people.
A similar unspoken understanding applies to the West Bank. In a single week between November 18th and 24th, Israeli soldiers killed eight people there, including a child. Almost 1,000 Palestinians have been killed within its boundary since October 2023, and thousands more injured. Far short of Gaza’s casualty numbers and, therefore, hardly worth mentioning, or so the international silence implies. As more and more people are forced to seek work in Jerusalem, the UN Office for the Co-ordination of Humanitarian Affairs has recorded double the number of Palestinians injured by the IDF in 2025 compared to 2024 while trying to pass through the fortress wall to Israel. On average, the office states, nearly 12 people per month are injured in the process.
Bethlehem, with its normally bustling hotels, restaurants and souvenir shops, became a ghost town after October 2023. The level of unemployment in a city reliant on religious tourism had soared to 65 per cent by last month. The UN Conference on Trade and Development has attributed the economic decline to Israeli troop operations and damage to infrastructure and public services. Military checkpoints, frequent raids, house arrests, the dispersal of tear gas, the imposition of curfews and roadblocks are part and parcel of daily life. In the countryside, illegal settlers attack Palestinians, often with impunity, and steal their lands, depriving them of livelihoods harvested from olives, figs and almonds.
[ Gardaí to increase presence at Jewish events following Bondi Beach shootingOpens in new window ]
As Christians around the world hunker down to celebrate the arrival of a baby two millenniums ago, the birthplace of Jesus Christ remains a tense and dangerous place for its inhabitants. These are matters Irish Government ministers should chew on with their turkey and ham as they retreat from an Occupied Territories Bill with any real teeth and display a disturbing lack of urgency.
When news broke of the brutality on Bondi Beach, politicians, human rights campaigners and commentators will have paused to examine their consciences for anything that might have contributed to the killers’ anti-Semitism. It is right to be wary about inflammatory language. But it is wrong to back off from challenging injustice equally. A fear of inciting more incidents of hate-driven mass murder is likely to make international voices even more reticent now.
[ 'We need to show Jewish pride': Hanukkah celebration takes place in DublinOpens in new window ]
It is not always what is said that engenders hatred, however. Actions speak too. From the outset, it was feared that Netanyahu’s war on Gaza might radicalise yet another generation. US and EU support for it compounded that danger. So too did the complicit silence of other countries. Sometimes, what goes unsaid is as incendiary as what is said. Wrong is wrong. It must be challenged, wherever it is perpetrated.
Nothing excuses what those two killers did on Bondi Beach. But the people of Palestine should not be made to pay for it by world leaders who think it expedient to look away.
