These days, the authors of books and magazine pieces are supposed to provide neat solutions to the problems they describe. There is, in almost every contemporary political article or tome, a section that contains an agenda, a call to action, or a roadmap. The ever-expansive subtitles on such offerings often declare as much up front, promising a comprehensive guide to “How We Can Stop It” or “What We Must Do About It,” or, in those works that tend toward self-help, a pledge to arm readers with steps they can work through at home.
This piece will not do that. Indeed, it cannot. It is more akin to a Russian novel. It is fatalistic, impotent, and despairing, because, in this instance, the topic requires fatalism, impotence, and despair. On Sunday, December 14, 2025, an Islamist father-and-son duo attacked a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, killing 15 innocent people and injuring another 42. The terrorists used rifles to inflict their damage, and they fired more than 100 shots combined before they were finally taken down by police (one was killed, the other is alive). Per Reuters, the incident was merely the latest in “a string of antisemitic attacks on synagogues, buildings and cars” in the country.
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