[Order Michael Finch’s new book, A Time to Stand: HERE. Prof. Jason Hill calls it “an aesthetic and political tour de force.”]
The war in Gaza may soon be winding down, but the war against Israel and Jews won’t stop. A coordinated wave of boycotts, disinvitations, and street intimidation continues to target Israel and Jewish communities across Europe, North America, and Australia.
More on this worldwide “war against Israel and the Jews” can be found here: “OPINION – Even If Hamas Lays Down Its Arms, the Multifront War Against Israel Will Persist,” by Abraham Cooper and Daniel Schuster, The Media Line, October 6, 2025:
President Donald Trump is working to secure the release of 48 Israeli hostages, including the return of the dead and the barely living. We pray during this season of Jewish High Holy Days and the festival of Sukkot that his efforts will soon succeed.
The US president has backing for a 21-point plan to address the “day after” in Gaza and across the region, with key Arab and Muslim leaders supporting a framework that seeks to reconstitute Gaza without Hamas terrorists.
While we welcome any plan that prioritizes reconstruction over war, it is brutally clear that the war against the Jews will not end soon.
Demonization of Israel, Jews, and core Jewish values—including Zionism—continues to spread across nations, international justice venues, university campuses, airports and ports, cultural institutions, and sports arenas. Every insult, every call for a boycott, and every violent act against Jews at prayer is legitimized and amplified across social media.
How bad could it get? Just days before the murderous Yom Kippur attack on a Manchester synagogue, CRIF—the official body of French Jewry—released a poll whose ominous findings reveal a growing black hole of Jew-hatred. Nearly one in three young French citizens (18–24) considers it legitimate to target Jews because of Gaza. Almost one in five French people overall share this view.
In apparent anticipation of charges of antisemitism, 68% of respondents recognized that antisemitism is a threat to society as a whole. Words condemning antisemitism in theory do nothing to protect Jews in practice. Jews across the UK and around the world were angered by British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s hollow condemnation of the Yom Kippur attack, even as he and the mayors of London and Manchester did nothing to block pro-Hamas demonstrations held less than two hours after the synagogue attack. Taking their cues from political leaders, police in many European capitals stand idly by as genocidal chants echo on their streets.
Nor is it lost on Jewish residents of Amsterdam—still reeling from the violent, coordinated attack against Israeli sports fans who traveled to the city where Anne Frank hid to enjoy a “friendly” football match—that the mayor was a no-show at an event marking two years since Israeli hostages were beaten and dragged into underground Gaza dungeons….
Even if the Gaza War ends with Hamas stripped of its weaponry, and the nightly news at last carries interviews with Gazans, no longer afraid, denouncing Hamas for its brutality, the anti-Israel crowds that spew their venom around the world will — for a while — continue to do so.
Those who support Israel, and want to change the minds of so many who have been parroting Hamas talking points, have in front of them a long long trail a-winding. But they must not falter nor fail. If they keep at it, answering every falsehood with sober facts, by dint of that determined repetition, eventually the truth will out. Israel will recover its prewar standing. And those who have maligned Israelis as “Nazis” committing “genocide” in Gaza will have to keep quiet.