You would think that what happened on Bondi Beach in Australia on the first day of Hanukkah this year was enough to horrify the world and show that Jews are still being persecuted simply because they are Jews.

But it wasn’t enough.

On the last day of Hanukkah, pro-Palestinian protesters assaulted Jews in Istanbul on their way to a candle lighting near the Neve Shalom synagogue, shouting anti-Zionist slurs as police dispersed the crowd, some of whom waved Palestinian flags.

In the videos, the attackers condemned the “acts of Zionists,” linking the attack as retribution for the conflict in Gaza. Amazingly, there were no casualties in Istanbul.

But in a world where hatred is expressed in a growing number of assaults that target people not for who they are, but what group they might fit into, light needs to keep shining on what’s going on. Every day.

It needs to be talked about, lived, acknowledged, remembered. That’s because it is too simplistic, I know, to believe that we will ever just be able to exist in a world where everyone is taken as an individual, where........

© Finger Lakes Times