Australia’s terror attack: How should we respond to abject evil?

How are we to respond to the abject evil we see in the world? That is the question forced upon us by the vile, antisemitic murders in Australia. Not a policy question or a sociological one, but a moral one. What do we owe the innocent when evil shows itself plainly, without disguise or excuse? Several years ago, a single gunman armed with a rifle walked through the front doors of Parliament in Ottawa. In that moment, it became uncomfortably clear how fragile public safety really is. The only thing preventing such an attack, at any given time, is the willingness of a perpetrator to try. That truth becomes starker when the victims are not soldiers or police, not politicians or symbols of the state, but ordinary people going about their lives. People on a street. People in a park. People targeted not for what they do, but for who they are. There is something especially corrupt about violence against the innocent. Mere criminality becomes moral inversion: a stark assertion that weakness deserves punishment and that identity itself is a provocation. In the aftermath of atrocities, public figures reflexively reach for the language of “thoughts and prayers,” only to be met with predictable scorn. The phrase is dismissed as performative. Insufficient. A substitute for action. In one sense, the critics are right. Thoughts and prayers alone do not stop evil. They do not arrest murderers or dismantle networks of hate. But it does not follow that they are meaningless. Sincere expressions of grief and solidarity are a necessary starting point, because they affirm something increasingly under strain: our shared humanity. They say the victims are not abstractions or statistics. They mattered. They still matter. Prayer is less a substitute for responsibility and more a confession that responsibility exists. The deeper problem is not that sympathy is insufficient. It is that it is so often hollow, and is followed by nothing at all. Or worse, by evasions and silences that quietly excuse the climate in which violence flourishes. For years, those in positions of authority across the West have spoken openly about the dangers of right-wing extremism. Governments commission reports, fund task forces, expand surveillance powers, and build entire bureaucracies devoted to combating it. Media outlets treat the subject as a permanent emergency. Universities embed it in curricula. Whether one agrees with every aspect of that focus or not, the premise is clear. Open hatred against identifiable groups is dangerous and must be confronted early and decisively. So the question practically asks itself. Where is the comparable urgency when it comes to antisemitism? A society that ranks hatreds does not eliminate them. It merely rearranges its blind spots. If the only thing standing between public life and sudden violence is a person’s willingness to commit it, then the responsibility of a free society is obvious: It must ensure hatred is neither rewarded, normalized, nor excused. It must never allow violence to feel permissible, understandable, or worthy of admiration. On that measure, Canada’s failure is abject, as we continue to do the opposite. Antisemitic hatred rarely announces itself as hatred. It is packaged as a call to justice, but stripped of these pretences, it is simply the same ancient hatred we’ve had millennia to prepare for. And yet, here it persists, rehearsed in public, chanted in the streets, and defended as political expression. Through inaction, we teach that some targets are acceptable, some threats tolerable, some fears negotiable. When that lesson is absorbed, the leap from words to violence is simply a small, logical step to take. Instead of sustained resolve, we see indulgence. Street protests where genocidal slogans are shouted are tolerated or reframed. Elected officials issue statements that carefully avoid naming Jews as victims, or as merely ones alongside a long laundry list of others as well. Cowardice in leadership always presents itself as balance. But this is not neutrality, it is abdication. None of this is an argument against free speech or lawful protest. It is an argument against the lie that words have no consequences. Violence does not erupt spontaneously. It is prepared, normalized, and excused long before it is carried out. To respond to abject evil requires more than grief. In this moment, we need sober judgement and the courage to say plainly that some ideas are poisonous, some movements dangerous, and some silences indefensible. Evil does not need encouragement. It only needs permission. Canada likes to think of itself as a decent country that stands instinctively against hatred. That self-image is now being tested. Australia’s permissiveness of antisemitism feels like a mirror for our own, and we now see the consequences. A nation that cannot confront antisemitism plainly, consistently, and without excuse is not confused. It is avoiding the truth. And avoidance, when it comes to evil, is not neutrality. It is surrender.