On International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Israeli Ambassador to the United Nations, Danny Dannon, wrote an opinion article titled, “Why are Jews still attacked worldwide?”
To answer this staggering question, Danon wrote:
International Holocaust Remembrance Day is meant to stop time. To force the world to confront the industrial murder of six million Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators.
We remember these atrocities because memory is supposed to protect the future and because education is meant to prevent repetition. But honoring the victims demands more than ritual; it demands responsibility.
That is why remembrance ceremonies take place, year after year, in institutions like the United Nations. This body was created on the foundations of the Holocaust itself, created on the promise that the world would not stay silent again while hatred escalated into annihilation.
But remembrance without action is hollow.
Because while solemn words are uttered, Jewish people are being attacked worldwide for being Jewish. Antisemitism is spreading with alarming speed, and the institutions built to confront hatred are too often enabling the pernicious narratives that sustain it.
History teaches a hard truth: genocide does not begin with mass killings. Long before that, it begins with gradual dehumanization. With language that strips a people of legitimacy. With lies repeated until they sound like fact and with moral confusion masquerading as neutrality.
In the past year alone, synagogues have been firebombed. Jewish festivals have become hunting grounds, with the Bondi Beach massacre on Hanukkah and the Manchester terror attack on Yom Kippur.
Children’s parks in Brooklyn have been defaced with swastikas. Kosher restaurants are vandalized. Holocaust survivors have once again thrown themselves over loved ones to protect them from gunfire.
Hatred that begins with words does not remain words. It spreads. It legitimizes itself. And eventually, it kills.
Danon is right. One would assume that the world would have learned from the evil horrors of the Holocaust. Instead, we are again living in a time when antisemitism is spreading and devouring like a wildfire.
To further answer the question “Why are Jews still attacked worldwide?” we must also consider the spiritual battle that surrounds antisemitism—one that is demonic in nature.
We can trace this spiritual battle all the way back to the Garden of Eden, after the fall of man. God promised in Genesis 3:15 that a Messiah would come from “the seed of the woman” (also see Isaiah 7:14). This “seed of the woman” would one day crush the head of the serpent. Ever since then, Satan has been on the defensive—and has targeted the line through which the Messiah would come: the children of Abraham, Isaac, and Israel.
If Satan could have totally corrupted all of the human race before the flood, then there would be no Messiah. He failed. If Satan, working through Pharaoh, could have destroyed all the Hebrew baby boys, then there would be no Messiah. Again, he failed. Satan tried to destroy the Jewish people through the Assyrians, the Egyptians, the Babylonians, the Medes and Persians, King Herod, the Romans in 70 AD, Hitler in World War II, and through the horrors and atrocities that we saw on October 7th, 2023.
Again and again, Satan failed to destroy the Jewish people. Why would he even want to do that? Very simply, because he hates what God loves.
God loves the Jewish people and has a very bright future for Israel. Just read about what it will be like when the Messiah returns (Isaiah 2, 11; Zechariah 8, 14; Zephaniah 3, etc.), the preeminent shift will be from the Gentiles to the Jewish people. No longer will the Jewish people be a doormat for the Gentiles to walk all over.
Satan knows these Scriptures very well. He knows that when the Messiah returns, his doom begins—cast into the bottomless pit for a thousand years. Eventually, his home will be in the lake of fire, where he will be tormented day and night forever. If Satan can destroy the Jewish people, then he can prevent all of this from coming to pass. If the Jewish people are erased, they will not exist to cry out for the Messiah to come (Hosea 5:15, Zechariah 12:10, and Matthew 23:39), which is the call that Jesus answers with His second coming.
Paul tells us in Ephesians 2:2 that Satan is “the prince of the power of the air” working in the “sons of disobedience.” That is the crux of antisemitism and anti-zionism. That does not mean that man is not responsible. God will bring judgment to this world for how they have treated His chosen people. You can be sure of that. But when mankind rejects God, Satan is all too willing to step into the gap.
We’re seeing a demonic hatred for Israel and the Jewish people, and it’s going to continue to intensify until the Messiah returns.
Danny Dannon closes his article by saying this:
The good news is that today is not 1941. The Jewish people are no longer defenseless. We have Israel.
While we still face genocidal regimes like Hamas and the Islamic Republic of Iran, who continue trying to do what the Nazis failed to do – to erase us – we have a formidable military to protect us.
The days when Jews are massacred without response or consequence are over. This is what it means to no longer be defenseless. This is what “Never Again” really means. Israel will never let a second Holocaust happen.
Friends, I wish that last statement were true. Unfortunately, according to God’s Word, it’s not. Zechariah the prophet, writing 2500 years ago, stated that two-thirds of the Jewish people living during the seven-year tribulation period—otherwise known as the “time of Jacob’s trouble”—will be killed. That is a death toll larger than that of the Holocaust.
Horrific times are coming to this planet—unlike anything that has been seen before. Where is the hope? It is only in Israel’s Messiah. When Jesus returns, He will rescue the remnant of His people, Israel, and destroy those who come against them. Then He will fix the mess that this world has made, ushering in His long-awaited kingdom. He is the only hope for this world.
Look at Isaiah 45:21-22, “There is no other God besides Me, a just God and a Savior; there is none besides Me. Look to Me, and be saved, all you ends of the earth! For I am God, and there is no other.”
Why not turn to Jesus today while you still have breath? I say this to the Jewish people. I say this to Gentiles around the world. Don’t wait for the horrors of the tribulation to come. He wants to save you from what’s coming in the future. Even more so, He wants to save you from your sins. Turn to Him today. He wants to grant you the free gift of eternal life. The Apostle Paul writes this in Romans 1:16, “For I am not ashamed of the gospel of Christ, for it is the power of God to salvation for everyone who believes, for the Jew first and also for the Greek.”
The Bible that we have is all about Him. It’s about Israel’s Messiah from Genesis to Revelation. That is the hope that we rest in.
