Opinion: Jewish communities facing increased threats - Juliet Moses

A woman holds flowers and an Israeli national flag in a sign of support outside the Capital Jewish Museum following a shooting that left two people dead, in Washington, DC, on May 23, 2025. Photo / AFP

THE FACTS

• Tens of thousands of people have died in an ongoing conflict since Hamas launched an attack on Israel on October 7, 2023.
• Earlier this month, a man in Colorado attacked Jewish people marching for Israeli hostages still held in Gaza.
• In May, a UN representative said 14,000 babies would die in Gaza in 48 hours if aid was not let in. The claim was retracted by the UN and various media outlets.

“Child killer!” This is one of the slurs that media recently reported that a man yelled when he punched an Israeli visitor in Christchurch.

Two days before that report, a man in Colorado attacked Jews marching for the hostages still held in Gaza by the terrorist group Hamas after its barbaric invasion of Israel on October 7, 2023. As he set them alight, he yelled “free Palestine” and “how many children have you killed?”. Several marchers were hospitalised for burns, including an 88-year-old Holocaust survivor.

The Christchurch man’s lawyer argued that the attack was not a hate crime, arguing he had no issues with Israelis, or Jewish people, but he did have issues with the actions of the Israeli military. For most of Israel’s Jewish citizens (about 21% of Israel’s citizens are Arab), military service is compulsory because of the number of attempts and threats to annihilate the state since its founding, including from Hamas.

The Colorado man told investigators he wanted to “kill all Zionist people”. The vast majority of Jewish people are Zionist — meaning that they believe that Israel should continue existing as the nation state of the Jewish people, and not, as is commonly misrepresented, that they necessarily support any Israeli government or its policies, including on the war in Gaza.

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Neither of these unrepentant men claimed that they had attacked Jews because they hated Jews. But antisemitism, or Jew hatred, does not always require hating every Jew. It portrays Jews collectively as oppressors who deprive others of opportunity or salvation and denies them equal rights.

The persecutors of Jews have always claimed justifications that allow them to believe that they are morally righteous and blame their actions on the victims. The justification was religion in the Middle Ages, science in the post-Enlightenment West, and Communism in Stalinist Russia. Today, it is human rights. Jews are despised for their nation state that we are expected to accept is the world’s worst human rights offender, though an objective comparison with multiple other states including its neighbours reveals otherwise.

Some tropes remain constant though. It is no coincidence that both men accused their victims of child-killing. The horrors of war, in which children always tragically die, have been contorted into an accusation of “child-killing” against all Jews and Israelis. This is a chilling echo of the “blood libel” — the calumny of Jews’ bloodlust for killing non-Jewish children that has given its hysterical believers the drive and permission to murder Jews since medieval times.

In another twist on the blood libel, in late May, a UN representative declared 14,000 babies would die in Gaza in 48 hours if aid was not let in. After the absurd fallacy was credulously reported by much of the media, it was retracted. Meanwhile, after two years of civil war in Sudan that has caused what is called the worst humanitarian crisis on record, the UN has estimated that 770,000 children under 5 will suffer from severe acute malnutrition this year. Have you seen reporting and protests about that?

Israel should be criticised like any other state. But criticism of Israel is not propagating misinformation and conspiracy theories. It is not dehumanising Jewish people. It is not holding Jews responsible for Israel’s perceived or actual actions and believing it is a moral imperative to collectively punish them, whether by excluding them from society or physically attacking them.

It is not demanding Jews renounce their universal right to self-determination embodied by Israel or denying them the same protections and understandings afforded to other minorities — including defining what is prejudice towards themselves. It is not chanting to “globalise the intifada” — an unequivocal call for violence heard at New Zealand protests. And none of it will end the war in Gaza or “free Palestine”.

In the last month, Jewish communities in New Zealand and globally have observed a serious escalation in troubling rhetoric and threats, arguably worse than at any time since right after October 7.

We know what happens when people lose capacity for critical thought and succumb to a mania that normalises, demands and justifies violence against Jews. They may tell themselves that it places them on the right side of history, but in the long history of the Jewish people, it never has.

Juliet Moses is the New Zealand Jewish Council president and a lawyer.