Happy Chanukah
This (taken in Kiel, Germany in 1931 and then colorized) is one of the most famous photographs in Jewish history, but it acquired special resonance this weekend. It communicates pretty much everything I’d want to say about the Bondi Beach massacre in Australia, more succinctly than I could in words.
But I can’t resist sharing one more photo, after GPT5-Pro helpfully blurred the faces for me. This is my 8-year-old son Daniel, singing a Chanukah song at our synagogue, at an event the morning after the massacre, which was packed despite the extra security needed to get in.
Alright, one more photo. This is Ahmed Al Ahmed, the hero who tackled and disarmed one of the terrorists, recovering in the hospital from his gunshot wounds. Facebook and Twitter and (alas) sometimes the comment section of this blog show me the worst of humanity, day after day after day, so it’s important to remember the best of humanity as well.
Chanukah, of course, is the most explicitly Zionist of all Jewish holidays, commemorating as it does the Maccabees’ military victory against the Seleucid Greeks, in their (historically well-attested) wars of 168-134BCE to restore an independent Jewish state with its capital in Jerusalem. In a sense, then, the terrorists were precisely correct, when they understood the cry “globalize the intifada” to mean “murder random Jews anywhere on earth, even halfway around the world, who might be celebrating Chanukah.” By the lights of the intifada worldview, Chabadniks in Sydney were indeed perfectly legitimate targets. By my worldview, though, the response is equally clear: to abandon all pretense, and say openly that now, as in countless generations past, Jews everywhere are caught up in a war, not of our choosing, which we “win” merely by surviving with culture and memory intact.
Happy Chanukah.
Follow
Comment #1 December 15th, 2025 at 2:09 pm
The Gaza War was 5-10,000 Bondi Beaches.
Comment #2 December 15th, 2025 at 2:34 pm
Student #1: And the Holocaust, which those who started the Gaza war and the shooters at Bondi Beach and their fellow intifada believers around the world all seek to finish, killed 300x as many civilians as the Gaza war, more than a third of all the Jews on earth.
That’s why those of us who’ve progressed beyond the moral stage of toddlers look both at numbers and at intent, at the moral worldview that animates the killers.
Comment #3 December 15th, 2025 at 2:42 pm
Since this post is mainly about history, going back thousands of years, it’s worth pointing out that, unsurprisingly, indiscriminate violence (aka terrorism) is a common tactic used by many, at one point or another:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_David_Hotel_bombing
Comment #4 December 15th, 2025 at 2:58 pm
Maybe the definition of Righteous Among the Nations should be expanded to include Ahmed.
Comment #5 December 15th, 2025 at 3:07 pm
Anonymous Ignoramus #3: When you respond to a mass murder that happened literally yesterday with “but what about the bombing of the King David Hotel in 1946?,” you sort of make my point for me more eloquently than anything I could write. And certainly you live up to your name.
Comment #6 December 15th, 2025 at 3:08 pm
Student #1: I am not particularly known to be a fan of the actions of Israel’s current government in Gaza (Scott might even consider me part of the worst of humanity that shows up in his comment section), but reacting to someone’s grief with accusations even though Scott didn’t mention Gaza at all doesn’t strike me as the most humane approach.
Scott: my sympathies to you and the entire Jewish community.
Comment #7 December 15th, 2025 at 3:10 pm
Shmi #4: Yeah, I was just thinking that this morning. The Garden of the Righteous at Yad Vashem is the single most moving place I’ve ever been. It could be expanded to include all Gentiles who risked their lives to save Jews throughout history.
Comment #8 December 15th, 2025 at 3:57 pm
The price of incitement: You wanted blood, and you got it. So spare us your shock … you did this
Yoni Bashan
Now they’re all shocked. The progressive activists. The influencers. The Greens. The podcasters. All those impeccably right-on people who’ve spent two years making “Zionist” – or “Zio” – the dirtiest word in the Australian vocabulary. Who marched down Oxford Street during the Mardi Gras holding a sign that said “Globalise the Intifada”.
Well, congratulations. The Intifada’s here. Globalised. Mission accomplished.
It arrived on Sunday night, on the first night of Hanukkah. The so-called resistance moment – that noble struggle for liberation we’ve been hearing so much about – manifested as gunmen opening fire on Jewish families celebrating their festival by the sea. Fifteen dead. At least. A 10-year-old girl among them. The motive? Oh, we don’t officially know the motive yet. But of course we know the motive. We’ve watched it incubate in this country since October 7, 2023: anti-Jewish rhetoric in the guise of morally urgent criticism of a war in the Middle East.
Dressed up by the very people now eagerly posting their condolences. Their horror and devastation and disbelief.
But here’s what needs to be said to the people who’ve spent two years treating Israel as a uniquely evil state. Who’ve made “Zionism” synonymous with racism and slavery and every conceivable sin. Who’ve said Zionists should not be platformed, should not have culturally safe spaces, should essentially be drummed out of polite society. Who’ve chanted “from the river to the sea” at rallies, in parliament, and posted it on their Instagram stories with little -watermelon emojis:
You built this. You laid the foundations, brick by rhetorical brick, post by viral post, march by march with your inverted red triangles and your signs bearing the words “Zionists are neo-Nazis”.
What exactly did you think “intifada” meant? It means blood. It has always meant blood. And now they’ll be cleaning up the blood on Bondi Beach for weeks.
Take Nasser Mashni, now sending “love, care and solidarity” to the Jewish victims. The same Nasser Mashni who for two years, in his role with the Australian Palestine Advocacy Network, has painted Zionism as “settler colonialism” and “Jewish supremacy”. Who thinks Israel’s destruction would bring about – and I quote – the “liberation of the earth”. Who won’t call Hamas a terrorist group but who, sure, stands in solidarity. Very meaningful.
Or Randa Abdel-Fattah, the author and academic, who’s expressing sadness online at this “horrific act of anti-Semitism”. Who’s on record saying Zionists have “no claim or right to cultural safety”. Who quite literally, the day after the October 7 massacres – the day after families were burned alive in their homes – changed her profile picture to a paraglider in Palestinian colours.
Mary Kostakidis finds it all “deeply shocking”. The former SBS newsreader who’s spent months promoting conspiracy theories about the “Zionist lobby”, who reposted a tweet earlier this year claiming the “genocide” in Gaza is the real cause of under¬lying anti-Semitism. Which, even if Mary didn’t mean this, sounds to me like: Jews supporting Israel bring it on themselves.
But Bondi? What happened? Shocking.
Greens senator Mehreen Faruqi said: “My thoughts are especially with the Jewish community.” The same community whose state is “rogue” and “genocidal”. Abbie Chatfield is “heartbroken” and “sickened” by the “anti semetic (sic)” attack. Despite refusing to “platform Zionists” on her podcast. Despite publicly shaming a man as a “genocide supporter”. Just politics, right? Nothing personal.
Anti-Semitism has always been like this. It never goose-steps into the ball dressed as anti-Semitism. It doesn’t wear a sign. It arrives in the costume of the moment. As nationalism. As anti-capitalism. As social justice. It makes itself sound reasonable, even righteous. It speaks in the gentle language of decolonisation and human rights.
And then people die; that’s how this story goes.
Yes, you can criticise Israel. You can oppose settlements and protest civilian casualties in Gaza. But there’s a difference – and it’s a life-or-death difference now – between protest and incitement. Between holding a government accountable for its conduct in war and demonising an entire people.
Because when people talk about Russia and its war in Ukraine, none of it metastasises into graffiti on Russian restaurants. Into harassment of Russian students. Into boycotts and firebombings. Or bullets on beaches.
But with Israel? With Jews? It always does. Every single time. And the Jewish community kept saying this. We saw it coming. We saw it in Europe and America. We saw it in England.
So spare us the shock. Save the thoughts and prayers.
You don’t get to globalise the intifada and then act all surprised when it finally shows up.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/commentary/the-price-of-incitement-you-wanted-blood-and-you-got-it-so-spare-us-your-shock-you-did-this/news-story/ff2022a0e075fa0f3f0463a6160f39a3
Comment #9 December 15th, 2025 at 4:15 pm
Everyone: It’s impossible to overstate the degree to which my life improved, after I finally (after decades!) abandoned the idea that I have a moral obligation to continue arguing with commenters who would just as soon see me and my family dead. These days I argue only to the extent that I find it amusing and/or instructive, then let all further comments pile up in my moderation queue where they belong.
Comment #10 December 15th, 2025 at 4:49 pm
@Scott and the events of the Hanukkah war are becoming ever-better attested, now with physical remains from one of Judah the Maccabee’s battles: https://www.jpost.com/archaeology/article-880003
Anonymous Ignoramus #3: cease your blood libel. The King David Hotel had been taken over by the British colonial government’s military. Bombing it was, in terms I’m sure you’d love to use, an anti-colonial, anti-imperial operation by an indigenous people against a military target. Further, the Irgun called to warn people of the bomb. Why do you hate facts and the Jewish pursuit of self-determination?
Comment #11 December 15th, 2025 at 7:29 pm
Is it accurate to say that ‘the police wouldn’t intervene’? One officer is dead, another in the hospital. If that’s the truth, let it be heard, but it seems something we should be careful about.
Comment #12 December 15th, 2025 at 7:41 pm
Gabriel #11: I read several accounts saying as much, but on reflection you’re absolutely right — I took that out unless and until we have more reliable information about the police response.
Comment #13 December 15th, 2025 at 10:02 pm
Regarding history, unfortunately with the current state of the state of Israel it might be that Lag Baomoer might be a better representation of where the Zionist movement is heading to. (Lag Baomer celebrates the Bar-Kochva rebellion against the Roman empire. Unfortunately it ended up with a disaster. In particular, the suicide of the extremists in Masada.)
Also, it is worth remembering that the Maccabees were also religious extremists. Funny enough they became more and more mityavnim (that is they adopted the Greek culture). Eventually everything ended up when the Romans took over and destroyed the second Temple. (Well there were a few other rebellions afterwards, but essentially Jewish independence ended.) It took about 2000 years to establish a Jewish state again.
Comment #14 December 15th, 2025 at 11:35 pm
Years ago, when I was living in North America and my children were just born, I bought a Hanukkah menorah with a lot of candles. I did it because I was influenced by great Israeli friends and a large Jewish community living closeby. Now my children are almost man, but we still celebrate Hanukkah at home, lighting the menorah and playing with the dreidel.
Happy Hanukkah, Scott! I wish peace and enlightment for all.
Comment #15 December 15th, 2025 at 11:43 pm
Hi Scott,
I wish you and your family the very best of holidays, all things considered. The news from Bondi is awful.
Comment #16 December 16th, 2025 at 2:30 am
Absolutely beautiful post
Comment #17 December 16th, 2025 at 5:17 am
Happy Chanukah to you and your family Scott, and may the future bring better days.
Comment #18 December 16th, 2025 at 9:27 am
It’s both beautiful and heartwrenching to see two images of bravery and defiance against the darkness: a little guy singing, and an older guy in a hospital bed. Maybe the simple, good things in life – going to a beach, being a kid, attending school, yelling at a teenager for not doing their laundry – may all these things prevail. May courage be in our bones, but not be required in our daily lives.
Happy Hannukah!
Comment #19 December 16th, 2025 at 12:53 pm
Thank you for your steady support of Israel and your insightful comments on Quantum Information systems.
Comment #20 December 16th, 2025 at 5:54 pm
#1
Intentionally targeting civilians is a war crime.
Civilians dying in a war and military conflict when the target is a military person and not the civilians is not.
One can say IDF should do more to avoid killing civilians, or uses disproportional force. That is a fair criticism.
That is very different from targeting civilians intentionally.
Saying that it is OK to kill civilians intentionally cause some other civilians died is ISIS mentality. I hope you grow up to be able to understand that during wars civilians die, but targeting civilians internally is a war crime.
Pick any war and any side you like and I will show you that civilians died in that war as a result of actions of the side you hold to be righteous.
You cannot target civilians, whatever cause you hold dear, period.
Comment #21 December 16th, 2025 at 6:02 pm
These American radical leftists (same for non-American ones) justifying the actions of these groups, I really wonder what they would say if ISIS terrorists massacred their family in their hometown for no reason, and justified it based on the actions of the US military in Iraq.
Comment #22 December 17th, 2025 at 12:42 pm
Dear Scott,
Do you believe Mizrahi Jews “count” as real Jews, or not?
Comment #23 December 17th, 2025 at 12:46 pm
Eric #22: It’s so obvious and not-even-a-question that Mizrahi Jews are real Jews, that that question could only be asked by a troll. Which is why I expect that you’ll fully out yourself as a troll in your very next comment, and then I’ll let that comment languish in my moderation queue.
Comment #24 December 17th, 2025 at 1:03 pm
I’m sorry if I came off as trollish.
Unlike Ashkenazim, Mizrahim did not experience the Holocaust. They do not have the ancestral trauma of whole family lines extinguished in gas chambers and forests. They did not experience the pogroms and the burning of the villages. All of the great Jewish thinkers were Ashkenazi. The culture that produced von Neumann and Einstein and Bohr was distinctly Ashkenazi. Zionism was Ashkenazi. Jewishness and European past go hand in hand. The Mizrahi do not have the same history or the same experience. Muslim rulers were much kinder to them than the Christian rulers. Ashkenazi have a very different culture and history. I do not believe that Mizrahim needed an Israel to be safe s much as the Ashkenazim did. But I am happy to be shown wrong.
Comment #25 December 17th, 2025 at 3:50 pm
Eric #24: Yeah, you’re wrong about that.
It’s true that the Mizrahim were generally treated better in Muslim lands than the Ashkenazim were treated in Europe (not a high bar: one just needs to not have a Holocaust). But they weren’t treated well: they were always second-class citizens, subject to demeaning taxes and periodic antisemitic pogroms.
More to the point: not long after Israel was established, all across the Muslim world, the Mizrahim were expelled from their homes as retaliation for Israel’s existence (or their situations were made intolerable until they left), their property stolen down to what they could carry and the clothes on their backs. So Israel, with great difficulty, absorbed virtually all of them. Unlike with the Palestinians, no one has ever discussed repatriation or a “right of return” or even compensation for these million refugees: it was just assumed that they were Israel’s problem now. So Israel solved the problem. The Mizrahim are no longer refugees; they’re home.
Some will say, “aha, yet another problem to lay at Zionism’s feet! If Israel had never been established, the Mizrahim could’ve presumably just continued to live in Syria and Yemen and Morocco and Iraq and Iran and Lebanon.”
But I have a different interpretation. To me, the very fact that the Mizrahim could be expelled and expropriated as punishment for what their coreligionists did in a different country, underscores that their situation was never secure in the first place, and thereby adds to the case for Zionism. It turned out that the Mizrahim, no less than the Ashkenazim, could only be secure long-term in a Western-style liberal democracy that makes safeguarding Jews one of its central goals. And in the Middle East, the Jewish state is the only such place that exists.
Comment #26 December 17th, 2025 at 5:44 pm
Hi Scott.
I’m a non-Jewish Australian. I wrote on social media back in February that we have a serious problem with antisemitism here in Australia, and nothing was being done about it.
This is a beautiful country, filled with people who are trusting and tolerant literally to a fault.
Multiculturalism is almost a state religion here, but it will become a catastrophe if it comes to mean tolerating people who incite violence against Jews, or anybody else.
I’m personally very angry about it, and I suspect most of my fellow Australians feel the same way. This is a defining moment for our country. Either we wake up and remember who we are supposed to be, or we continue to allow violent antisemites to import their endless blood feuds into our country. Hard decisions are required, and I don’t know if our political class is up to the task.
Comment #27 December 17th, 2025 at 6:06 pm
Nick #26: Thanks so much for the thoughtful comment. I’ve enormously enjoyed my four visits to Australia, for the sights and the people, and I hope Australia successfully confronts this problem (which it shares with much of the world right now) and look forward to visiting again when the opportunity arises.
Comment #28 December 17th, 2025 at 7:21 pm
Comment #29 December 17th, 2025 at 7:27 pm
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9IyShPTJS7U
Comment #30 December 17th, 2025 at 11:23 pm
@Nick #26: Looks like meaningful action is being taken at astronomical speed? This is the kind of thing that Amercians can’t hope to get in a million years: https://www.npr.org/2025/12/15/nx-s1-5645002/australia-new-gun-laws-sydney-bondi-shooting
Comment #31 December 18th, 2025 at 8:25 am
To the Ashkenazim vs Mizrahim distinction.
It is interesting to note that statistically Ashkenazim are more supportive of peace and Mizrahim are much more militantly disposed. I wonder what could possibly cause that if they have been treated well by their neighbors while living in diaspora
Comment #32 December 18th, 2025 at 11:00 am
Happy Chanukah, Dr. Aaronson.
Comment #33 December 18th, 2025 at 11:30 am
Happy Hanukkah.
May the Bondi Beach victims be avenged, and may their memory be a blessing.
Comment #34 December 18th, 2025 at 6:35 pm
Happy Chanukah, Professor, and may those who were impacted by this terrible attack rest in peace. Ignore the comments, for: “It is to one’s honor to avoid strife, but every fool is quick to quarrel.”
Comment #35 December 18th, 2025 at 10:08 pm
I’m glad for you and your family, Scott. May you, your children, and many descendants preserve your memories for ages hence. Happy Chanukah.
Comment #36 December 20th, 2025 at 12:39 pm
Scott,
How do you feel about brilliant mathematicians like Teichmuller or Kahler, who did beautiful work, but were avowed Nazis and supporters of Hitler?
Can we still appreciate what they did? Can we still call them geniuses? Should we put a disclaimer before teaching about them?
I don’t know myself and can see both perspectives
Comment #37 December 20th, 2025 at 2:57 pm
Mister Transistor #36: I have the obvious feelings — that
(1) their math is still perfectly valid and fine to teach whenever relevant, and
(2) everyone who remembers their names should remember they were enthusiastic Nazis, down for murdering Jews way before that was compulsory.
I like to include biographical comments when I teach, so if I were to bring up Teichmuller or Kahler in a course (which I haven’t had occasion to), mentioning (2) would seem fitting. I talk about Bletchley Park when I talk about Turing and Turing machines, for an example on the “good” side. I don’t spend much time on Heisenberg when I teach quantum information, but if I did, I might talk about his nuclear work for the Nazis.
Of course I’m grateful that, at crucial moments in history (most famously WWII), good had more and better great scientists and mathematicians than evil had.
Comment #38 December 20th, 2025 at 4:08 pm
Isaac Newton (knowingly and enthusiastically) invested in the trans-Atlantic slave trade. Should that be front-and-center of his biography?
Thomas Jefferson raped his own slaves. Should that be what we remember him for?
History is full of brilliant minds who were also deeply flawed people. I don’t see why Nazi scientists and mathematicians were so different, why they need more condemnation than others.
Personally, I don’t believe in moral black-and-white, and while Nazi scientists and mathematicians were deeply flawed characters, I don’t think we should remember them as demons.
Comment #39 December 20th, 2025 at 4:54 pm
Mister Transistor #38: We always have to try to judge historical figures by the standards of their time. So, as general principles:
(1) If a great scientist or mathematician or artist was morally flawed, but only in a similar way to almost everyone else of their social station in the same era, the science or math or art then becomes the much more interesting thing about them.
(2) If someone was head-and-shoulders above their contemporaries on issues like slavery (eg Benjamin Franklin, John Adams, Charles Darwin), then it’s appropriate to celebrate them for it, even if they fall short of the moral standards of today.
(3) If someone was terrible even by the standards of their own time (Robert E Lee, scientists who worked for the Nazis), it’s appropriate to condemn them for it.
Comment #40 December 20th, 2025 at 7:37 pm
I read an article a few days ago that linked to a survey that found about a quarter of young people are anti-semtic. The survey literally asked “Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Jewish people?”, and a quarter of young people said unfavorable, including 24% of Harris voters [1]. Every few months it’s a new massacre, a new record for hate crimes, and our supposed allies are silent. I feel like I would be an idiot not to see that the same thing that’s been happening for the last 2000 years is happening again. I want to believe America is different, I want to believe that we are a nations of values and tradition not race and ethnicity, I want to believe that they won’t expel and kill us again like all the others. I want to believe it so much but I don’t know anymore. I am scared.
I don’t know what I’ll do if I’m wrong, the Levant is not my homeland, California is. The crisp cold mornings of the the redwood forests, the blinding fog driving towards grizzly peak, the midnight warmth of the central valley, the screech of BART coming to a stop, they are embedded within my heart. I don’t know if I’ll be able to bear leaving or survive staying. I hate it. I hate it so fucking much.
[1] https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2025/12/american-anti-semitism-youth/685261/
Happy Hanukkah. I wondered how many other Jews have contemplated their extermination while lighting those same 7 candles and saying those same few words. It’s a comforting thought to know I’m in good company.
Comment #41 December 20th, 2025 at 7:46 pm
I’m sorry, but I think you’re just wrong about these things.
Only a small fraction of mostly wealthy elites owned slaves in revolutionary-era America, and even back then it was rare or illegal throughout most of the North. And even back then, there was a sizeable abolitionist movement. So we can’t just say “Thomas Jefferson was doing it, but EVERYBODY was doing it.” It was an elite planter class in the American south.
Ditto Newton. A small fraction of the population of England or (after 1707) the UK ever purchased shares in the South Sea Company or the other big slave trading companies. And there was a sizeable religious abolitionist movement in Britain at the time.
And I’m not sure I agree with your premise that “We always have to try to judge historical figures by the standards of their time.” I mean, these people knew what slavery was. They knew how brutal it was. They knew that children were being kidnapped and transported on crowded filthy ships and sold like cattle. Why do they get a pass because society normalized it? They weren’t compelled or forced to participate in it.
And in a sense, I think Newton and Jefferson were more morally compromised than the Nazi scientists—because Newton and Jefferson had full knowledge of the brutality of slavery, while only parts of the SS and Nazi leadership knew about the Final Solution, the gas chambers, the extermination. These Nazi scientists had no idea, and if you asked them would have said they wanted Jews expelled from the Reich, not murdered.
Comment #42 December 20th, 2025 at 9:09 pm
Aser #40: Happy Hanukkah and stay strong!
For what it’s worth, my position is also that
(1) my life is in America,
(2) I have no plans to leave America,
(3) I want to continue fighting for the America that I learned to believe in as a child,
(4) even with everything that’s recently happened, Jews still have it about as good in America as they’ve ever had it in all the millennia,
(5) that statement would still be true even if things were to get ~10x worse than they are now,
(6) if things were to get even worse than that, and then worse and worse … well, I’m profoundly grateful that Israel exists and would be a viable place for us to move.
Comment #43 December 21st, 2025 at 8:30 am
#40
anti-Semitism is real, but I wouldn’t read too much about the polls like these.
if you ask Americans about Muslims, Homosexuals, Liberals, Conservatives, Evangelicals, Arabs, Chinese, Indians, Japanese, Mexicans, Italians, …. I would not be surprised to see similar above 20% negative result.
What is different for Jews is that there is a small radical group that not only dislike Jews, they hold them responsible for evil in their world, and are willing to act on such beliefs.
This happens to other groups from time to time, like the street fights in New York and anti Catholic anti Irish riots in 1800s. For whatever reason anti-Semitism seems to have been a more persistent and cross-cultural phenomenon. Though by historic standards, post WWII the situation has been better.
Maybe one day, when Israel has reached peace with its neighbors, and the Palestinians’ situation is settled in an acceptable manner, the things would be better.
Comment #44 December 21st, 2025 at 11:05 am
Mister Transistor #36, 38, 41: Do you really think that this post (given its occasion) is a good place for those questions and considerations?
Also, given how most science teachers rather tell stories (when they include biographical comments) instead of recounting actual history, I am skeptical of the idea to “judge historical figures” as part of those biographical comments.
I mean, that stuff is entertaining, for sure. For example, I did enjoy reading
“Einstein’s Mistakes: The Human Failings of Genius” by Hans C. Ohanian
and certainly learned some interesting true facts. But I quickly noticed that I should not trust the historical accuracy of Ohanian’s stories too much. Similar, I guess “Going Infinite: The Rise and Fall of a New Tycoon” by Michael Lewis was an enjoyable read for Scott. He probably also learned some interesting true facts, but I am unsure whether Scott noticed that he should not trust Lewis too much.
Scott,
after I learned of the Bondi Beach massacre, I checked whether you had reacted to it. It is good that you don’t stay silent! I was especially glad when I read
Scott #9:
Comment #45 December 22nd, 2025 at 3:12 am
Happy belated Hanukkah Scott! May you stop writing about this stuff soon, when a new era begins in which you do not need to (i.e. because everyone is safe and happy and able to celebrate their holidays free of fear). On the positive side, I’ve noticed massive pride and support for ahmed al ahmed in the arabic-speaking corners of the internet. My rough estimate is that supporting comments of him outnumber critizing comments like 30 to 1.
Comment #46 December 22nd, 2025 at 9:37 am
“This happens to other groups from time to time, like the street fights in New York”
to add something obvious, this also happened in New York jewish neighborhoods as well:
https://youtu.be/Xy4JCa60_ZQ
Comment #47 December 22nd, 2025 at 1:30 pm
H #45: Sadly, the Facebook algorithm has learned well that showing me every development in every antisemitism-related outrage everywhere in the world—and then showing me all the thousands of commenters who react to those stories (even, say, about the last minutes of the murdered 10-year-old girl Matilda) with laugh emojis and memes of hook-nosed Jews—is a reliable way to keep me engaged (and angry and depressed) for hours. Part of me thinks I should just stop looking, go cold turkey; another part of me remembers that the Jews 90 years ago who decided to just stop looking mostly ended up in gas chambers.
I had heard about people in Arabic social media condemning Ahmed al Ahmed as a “traitor” for saving the lives of Jews. I’m relieved to hear your estimate that those defending him outnumber those condemning him by 30:1.
Comment #48 December 23rd, 2025 at 2:12 pm
More generally, I guess, I’m a Christian and I pride myself on finding the infinite value in the soul of every human being, even ones who are easy to hate. It seems to me like you can’t do this with the Nazi scientists (for example). You would rather think of them as pure evil, as demons, rather than flawed characters (we all sin) who have committed evil but have souls and worth as human beings. I think this is part of the reason why you are depressed about the world. Maybe try to vicariously enter the mental/emotional world of these Nazi scientists, walk a mile in their shoes, and it will help you to understand and come to peace with it. Weimar Germany was a brutal time, and I can understand why a good human being could get caught up in all that nastiness and succumb to sin and brutality. It’s easy to just label them as “evil,” but the reality is that we all have that capacity for evil. Being caught up in something horrifying and evil and much, much bigger than yourself, in a time of confusion and brutality and suffering, does not make you an evil person.
Comment #49 December 23rd, 2025 at 2:41 pm
Mister transistor #48: I can read about Mengele (for example), and understand to some degree why he felt justified in doing what he did. But if he was a “good human being,” then there’s never been any such thing as a bad one. But I hold (in common with most of the world’s fiction and literature, and the Bible itself for that matter) that there are bad people, in the straightforward sense of people who do monstrously evil things, knowing on some level that they’re evil but doing them anyway.
Comment #50 December 23rd, 2025 at 2:54 pm
What Mengele did was horrific and monstrous and gravely sinful; it cries out for justice and for remembrance of the victims. At the same time, even he remained a human being made for God. God can forgive any sin if there is real repentance—but if he died refusing repentance, separation from God is tragically possible. I can’t declare his eternal fate; I entrust that to God.
That said, don’t you understand the titanic moral gulf between 1. Mengele, who performed sadistic medical experiments on unwilling victims, and 2. Someone like Teichmuller or Kahler, who were tragically “caught up” in a political cataclysm much bigger than themselves, and while they did support the Nazi party, did not participate in its atrocities and likely had limited knowledge of them? Could you forgive such a person? Teichmuller died in pain and in the cold and dark, in the slaughterhouse of Stalingrad. Almost as many German men perished in the Eastern front as Jews died in the Holocaust. I’m not saying they’re equivalent. But you can’t avoid feeling sympathy for the German men who died horrifically screaming for their mothers in Stalingrad, freezing to death or blown to pieces, even if they were gravely misguided, even if some of them supported the Nazi party.
Comment #51 December 23rd, 2025 at 3:27 pm
Mister Transistor #50: It depends what you mean. If I read a detailed account of Teichmuller’s death in Stalingrad, I’d probably find myself feeling pity for him, despite everything. But then I’d remember that he agitated against his Jewish professors even before the Nazis came to power (!), and would almost certainly have gladly forced me and my wife and my two kids into a gas chamber and released the gas canister himself. And then I feel less pity.
Comment #52 December 23rd, 2025 at 3:43 pm
“[He would] almost certainly have gladly forced me and my wife and my two kids into a gas chamber and released the gas canister himself.”
What gives you the confidence to say that? The way I see it, few Nazi supporters would actually be capable of this. Many millions of Germans supported the Nazi party and only a tiny fraction ever saw the gas chambers.
Comment #53 December 23rd, 2025 at 4:48 pm
Mister Transistor #52: Historians have debated these questions for generations. But with a few exceptions (Mengele may have been one of them), the men and women who voluntarily staffed the extermination centers don’t seem to have been especially notable for cruelty elsewhere in their lives. They were just ordinary Europeans who agreed with the idea that Jews are an evil infestation that the planet should be rid of—an idea that many millions of people in Europe and around the world, who consider themselves noble and righteous, still agree with today (although most of them now say “Zionists” rather than “Jews”).
Anyway, I regret that this line of questioning is now at an end. While it’s possible that you’re asking innocently and not out of trollish cruelty, years of experience moderating this comment section make me acutely aware of the possibility of the latter.
Comment #54 December 23rd, 2025 at 7:17 pm
I’m not trying to be cruel or trollish, and I am deeply sorry that life experience has given you that fear.
To be honest, I feel like you are an occassionally very unhappy and depressed person, and that the ancestral trauma of the Holocaust has made you cynical at the world.
I am trying to help you understand and heal by understanding the people—not the SS monsters, but the tens of millions of ordinary Germans who supported the Nazis—understanding their humanity, and seeing them as flawed humans rather than demons. I hoped that this vicarious understanding would help you. I’m not telling you to “get over the Holocaust.” I’m trying to make you see that most of them were not demons, but lost people.
But I was probably wrong to try this.
Anyway, I hope you can learn to feel better about other people and the world.
Comment #55 December 23rd, 2025 at 8:04 pm
Mister transistor #54: Frankly, I didn’t even need the Holocaust to tell me that a good portion of the human race is evil and cruel. My own experiences as a child, including with bullies and with vindictive counselors and teachers who sided with the bullies, taught me the exact same lesson. Indeed, this is what made the reality of the Holocaust comprehensible to me, as it wasn’t to others: the Nazis just seemed like the sneering bullies I endured every day, but scaled up a quadrillionfold in power.
And yes, absolutely, this realization put me at risk of going through my entire life misanthropic, fearful, and depressed.
But I also learned that, even if you exclude all the bullies, all the miserable blankfaces, all the people who’d gleefully join death squads if given the chance, you’re still left with billions of people—perhaps the majority of the human race. Everywhere I went, I found shockingly bad people, but also shockingly good people—often where I would never have expected them. That’s what gave me my hope and optimism. Better yet, as time went on, I was more and more able to encase myself in a bubble of the good people and exclude the bad ones … well anyway, until I became an Internet mini-celebrity who drew trolls and haters to him. 😀
Crucially, though, the reality of evil people in the world made me appreciate the many good people all the more. It made me want to pull out the stops, be unlimited in my generosity to the good ones, and thereby do my small part to help goodness triumph on earth.
Speaking of which, Merry Christmas! 😀
Comment #56 December 29th, 2025 at 6:24 am
My deepest condolences to you, Prof. Aaronson, and my support to the entire global Jewish community as you recover from this horrific terrorist atrocity.
I think the solution to the rising tide of anti-Semitism and persecution of Jews under the pretext of leftist and Islamist “activism” is for Jewish people in Western countries to stop being accommodating and polite to these bullies.
You do not owe anyone that, especially not in the face of such hostility from so-called “liberal” white people. Bluntly remind them how much the West owes to the Jewish people: Science, mathematics, music, technology, literature, medicine,… the Jewish contribution to practically EVERYTHING in the 20th and 21st centuries outweighs that of the rest of humanity, let alone the West, put together. Remind them that if Jewish people make aliyah to Israel, America will be reduced to no more than a collection of backwater Alabamas and Mississippis.
Comment #57 January 1st, 2026 at 2:20 pm
Scott #55:
The schoolyard bully comes home to an abusive alcoholic father who berates him and sometimes beats him. Violence and abuse is all he knows. He sees his mother being beaten by his father and it makes him feel powerless. Picking on kids who are physically weaker than him gives him some power back.
The blankface hates his job and feels like his life is a failure. His wife left him and took the kids. He has chronic pain and his shitty insurance won’t cover his treatment. He resents his job, he has no career trajectory, he has no meaning in his life. Making other people miserable by enforcing stupid rules gives him a tiny bit of satisfaction in a miserable world.
The anti-Semitic, neo-Nazi, 4Chan troll has never been in love, never had a girlfriend, never had his first kiss. He has no job prospects, can’t get into college, lives in his parents’ basement. Half his social media feed is liberals and feminists mocking and berating young men like him. The other half is “America First” white supremacists telling him he’s actually part of the master race, and all his problems are caused by the Jews. Guess which content he chooses to engage with.
The young Hamas recruit in Gaza has known nothing but desperate poverty his entire life. He’s rarely had enough to eat. He’s never had any job prospects. He watched his own mother and uncle crushed to death under rubble in ‘23. His childhood neighborhood is gone, rubble and ash and dust. He’s seen severed human hands and heads and arms.
——————————-
These are just a handful of (admittedly stereotypical) vignettes. There’s countless other stories like this. It’s easy to hate other people who are cruel to us, who say and do reprehensible things. It’s much harder to step inside their inner worlds and appreciate the ways in which they are suffering.
It’s good that you found people who are kind and compassionate, who make good friends and colleagues. I believe it’s unhealthy and wrong, though, that you divide humanity so neatly into “good people” and “bad people,” that you would cast the latter into the ash-heap. You never know what’s going on in somebody’s life, or how much suffering and anquish they are experiencing. Yes, there is both good and evil at work in this world, but most people do not fall cleanly into one category or another. People are complicated. As a Christian, I believe everyone has the capacity to be saved. Rather than excluding the “bad people,” I seek to understand them and the ways in which they are suffering, to extend my compassion to them whenever I can, and to help them become better people.
This is hard work. It is also the burden of every Christian. “He who is without sin may cast the first stone.” Can’t you imagine yourself becoming one of these “bad people” if your life had been different?
For all the suffering you’ve experienced, Scott, you’ve also, on the whole, led an incredibly privileged and fortunate life. You have a job you love, where you can earn a comfortable living thinking about the deep mysteries of the universe. You have a loving wife and family. You don’t have any chronic health issues. If your children got sick you’d be able to pay for their medical care. You have colleagues around the world who care about you and fans who adore you. 99% of people would envy your life. Many of the “bad people” you loathe have none of these things and envy you for them. Maybe they don’t have a family who loves them, maybe they hate their job, maybe they have health problems, maybe they’re poor, maybe they’re lonely.
I encourage you not to divide people into “good” and “evil.” I encourage you to extend your compassion to the blankfaces, the bullies, the idiots, the demented idealogues, the trolls. Maybe this can be your New Year’s resolution. It’s hard work, but I guarantee it will help you feel better.
Comment #58 January 1st, 2026 at 2:40 pm
Mister transistor #57: Certainly I agree that real people are neither 100% good nor 100% evil, but various shades of gray (even if those shades are sometimes 1% or 99%).
And certainly, I agree that looking for the good in each person is a worthy aspiration and an excellent New Year’s resolution for me in particular … with the proviso that some people make that much, much harder than others do.
Happy New Year!