The Massacre of the Innocents is the story told in the New Testament (but only in one of the Gospels), of King Herod ordering the slaughter of all males two years old or under. Regardless of its veracity, disputed by many historians, it nonetheless has always been a ghastly sub-plot or horrifying back-story to the otherwise uplifting tale of the Nativity and the birth of Jesus Christ in a straw-strewn manger – Joseph and Mary having been refused accommodation at the local inn.

But the ‘massacre of the innocents’ is certainly a literal and apt description of what occurred less than a hundred kilometres from Bethlehem some two thousand and twenty-three years later. Nearly fifteen hundred innocents mutilated, kidnapped, tortured, raped and/or murdered in the most grotesque and evil fashion. The ramifications and trauma have shaken to the core not only families, friends and loved ones but an entire nation and an entire diaspora scattered around the world.

The innocents massacred and those held hostage must be in our prayers this Christmas, and we must not rest until every individual complicit in this atrocity has surrendered to the Israelis and Hamas has been destroyed.

As much as a massacre of the innocents, 7 October and the weeks following has seen the massacre of innocence. Of our innocence. Of Western innocence. Of ‘enlightened’ innocence. Of the innocence of ‘compassion’ and ‘inclusion’.

The innocents were also those who have refused to take at their word Palestinians, Iranians and others who have repeatedly insisted that their goal is nothing short of the annihilation of the Jewish people and the destruction of Israel. For Israel, read ‘the West’. The innocents were also those who still allow their children to be educated by activists preaching the sickening moral equivalence nostrums of the modern left – parents who now sit and watch as their children attend ‘protests’ organised in sympathy with some who celebrate and delight in what was an orgy of pure evil.

The innocents include those who believe that all human beings are essentially kind at heart and anything is achievable through concerted efforts at peace and goodwill. (‘What’s so funny about peace, love and understanding?’ sang Elvis Costello back during whatever troubles were taking place in the late Seventies. The answer being: nothing, except peace, love and understanding don’t work when you’re confronted by a murderous psychopath.)

As the cover to our Christmas bumper special suggests, terrorists seek to also take hostage our culture, our traditions, our religion, our values and our belief in love and humanity. They seek to rob us of that greatest of all Judeo-Christian attributes, optimism. What surely disappeared down those tunnels was the confidence we can build a better world sitting around singing ‘Kumbaya’ at international conferences.

Too often we are told that things will ‘never be the same again’ after a dreadful event. Covid. September 11. This or that natural disaster. The barbarity and savagery of the morning of 7 October would seem to fit that description. As one Israeli told this magazine, ‘For many Jews now, there is life before and life after 7 October.’

Alas, the events of that ghastly day not only hint at a terrifying future but also are a grim reminder of an horrific past that includes countless pogroms and the industrialised depravity of the Holocaust. The sad reality is that along with the rape and sadism, the hithero comforting blanket of Judeo-Christian civilisation was torn asunder that morning, its gossamer veneer slashed and shredded before our eyes. We have been kidding ourselves for too long.

By their own admission, Hamas, Isis, Palestinian Islamic Jihad and the many other Islamist groups thrive on and yearn for death, bloodshed and martyrdom. There’s is a totalitarian doctrine and fundamentalist ideology that is only interested in complete domination and destruction of all who do not yield to their vile agenda of theocratic enslavement, misogyny and racism. Having won their elections in 2006, Hamas set about butchering those Palestinians who did not agree with them. Gays and other minorities are reportedly tossed off the nearest roof. The destruction of the Jews is not the end point of the radical Islamist ideology, it is the starting point.

You can dismiss the Palestinian mobs as the victims of some colonial fantasy, some absurd neo-Marxist concept of brown-skinned victims of white oppression, or perhaps as the brainwashed students of a depraved psycho-sexual death cult. (Taught, often, by teachers paid for by us.) But what you cannot brush aside is the reality that if the mobs get their way with the Jews, they won’t stop there.

Australians must choose whether we are prepared to tolerate the Labor approach that seeks to downplay antisemitism with platitudes and faux moral equivalence, or whether we demand from our political leaders unequivocal political support for Israel to take the actions necessary to defeat Hamas and for Australia to formulate policies that guarantee such antisemitic evil can never, ever take root on our shores. And that is a big task. In the meantime, we wish all our readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.