Jews form a minuscule proportion, around 0.2 per cent, of the world’s population and nowhere are they are safe. Sydney lies almost 10,000 miles from the sites where Nazi death camps in Poland once stood, and the distance from Tel Aviv is only slightly less. Yet the new world is no more impervious to the lethal fanaticism of antisemitic hatred than the old. It never recedes.

Jews celebrating the first day of Hanukkah – the festival of light, and in essence of religious liberty – at Bondi Beach were pitilessly targeted by gunmen. Eleven now lie dead, including a British-born rabbi. Faced with such barbarism, politicians have a natural instinct to appeal to common decency in contrast to what they wish was aberrant behaviour. This message is well-intentioned but misleading.

While the facts of the case have yet to be fully established, it is already clear this was not an arbitrary attack on Australian citizens. It was a lethal assault on Jews for being Jewish. And Jews worldwide will be rendered more vulnerable if the threat continues to be obfuscated.

The atrocity at Bondi Beach is horrific but not exceptional. It is a reprise of the........

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