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World Leaders Mark Hanukkah as Antisemitism Spikes Worldwide Amid Gaza War
German Chancellor Olaf Scholz and Rabbi Yehuda Teichtal, chairman of the Chabad Jewish Education Center, light a giant menorah to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah at Brandenburg Gate, in Berlin, Germany, Dec. 7, 2023. Photo: REUTERS/Annegret Hilse
World leaders on Thursday observed the first night of the Jewish festival of Hanukkah, expressing solidarity with their Jewish communities amid a global surge in antisemitism since Hamas’ mass slaughter of Jews during its Oct. 7 invasion of southern Israel.
Olaf Scholz became the first German chancellor to light the massive menorah in front of Berlin’s iconic Brandenburg Gate.
“I wish that the candle of Hanukkah will shine far beyond this square and much longer than just for the eight days of Hanukkah,” Scholz, wearing a kippa, said in the center of Germany’s capital.
Hanukkah, also known as the Jewish festival of lights, marks the re-dedication of the Holy Temple in Jerusalem in the 2nd century BCE, after a small group of Jewish fighters liberated the land from oppressive foreign forces.
“It stands for hope and optimism,” Scholz said of Hanukkah. “We especially need both in these days after the Hamas terror attack on Israel.”
Germany has registered at least 29 antisemitic incidents per day since the Oct. 7 Hamas massacre in southern Israel — a four-fold increase on the previous year, according to data published late last month by Rias, a federally-funded body monitoring antisemitic incidents. Rias counted a total of 994 antisemitic incidents since the Hamas onslaught. Germany is home to a Jewish community of approximately 118,000.
“I am happy that many citizens are supporting the Jewish community in word and deed and showing compassion and solidarity with our Jewish neighbors, friends and colleagues,” the German chancellor said. “That is why I’m also happy to be here today.”
Scholz added that Jews were an “inextricable part” of German society and called it “unacceptable” that they “have to be afraid to practice their religion, their culture.”
Historic event in Germany.
German chancellor Olaf Scholz just presided over the lighting of the giant Menorah — the largest in Europe — in front of Berlin’s landmark Brandenburg Gate. #Hanukkah pic.twitter.com/A3aV6q7ZZ0
— Jacob N. Kornbluh (@jacobkornbluh) December 7, 2023
Outside of Germany, antisemitism has also spiked to record levels around the world, including in the US, since Palestinian terrorists led by Hamas murdered 1,200 people on Oct. 7 and kidnapped 240 others. Copious documentation of the terrorists’ brutality, including torture and rampant sexual violence, has shocked the world.
The terror attacks and the Israel-Hamas war that they launched in Gaza have led to an eruption of antisemitic incidents worldwide — from arson attacks on synagogues in Armenia to mobs hunting Jews in Dagestan, Russia. Calls for Israel’s destruction and the intimidation and harassment of Jews have also become increasingly common across the West.
In such an environment, several world leaders took the first night of Hanukkah to show support for Jewish communities.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky, who is Jewish, held a Hanukkah candle-lighting ceremony with a group of rabbis. He shared video of the gathering on his social media accounts.
“The sacred Hanukkah lights, lit these days, remind us once again that light always prevails over evil. And of the value of life, which is worth fighting for,” Zelensky wrote on X/Twitter. “My best wishes to the Jewish community on Hanukkah!”
The sacred Hanukkah lights, lit these days, remind us once again that light always prevails over evil. And of the value of life, which is worth fighting for. My best wishes to the Jewish community on Hanukkah! pic.twitter.com/ghoawSdy7b
— Volodymyr Zelenskyy / Володимир Зеленський (@ZelenskyyUa) December 7, 2023
In Australia, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese extended greetings to the Jewish community.
“May you find comfort and hope as you honor the traditions that have sustained you for generations, and may the lights of Chanukah shine brightly through darkness,” he wrote on X.
Meanwhile, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau noted on social media the “incredibly difficult” last two months for Jewish people, since the Oct. 7 massacre, and the “disturbing rise in antisemitism” that ensued.
“I want to make it clear: our government stands with you. We will never accept any form of antisemitism or hatred and we will always speak up for Israel’s right to exist, and right to defend itself,” he said. “I hope that the lessons of Hanukkah and the glowing light of the menorah bring you hope during this difficult time.”
“The story of Hanukkah is a reminder that light shines brighter than darkness, and right always prevails over wrong,” the Canadian premier added. “It’s always a reminder of the resilience of the Jewish people, who’ve persevered through periods of unfathomable difficulty before, and Canada will continue to stand with Israel and Jewish communities around the world as we persevere through this as well.”
To Jewish Canadians across the country: As you gather around the Hanukkiah for the first night of Hanukkah, I want you to know that we stand with you – and I hope you can find comfort and strength as you celebrate your traditions. Chag Hanukkah Sameach. https://t.co/zoVwOJOR84 pic.twitter.com/WwQzrNGjuu
— Justin Trudeau (@JustinTrudeau) December 7, 2023
Lithuanian Prime Minister Ingrida Simonyte said in a social media message that the miracle of Hanukkah — when the Jews who rededicated the Holy Temple only had a one-day supply of oil to light the menorah and it somehow lasted for eight days — “reminds us that nothing is impossible.”
“This is especially important at a time when there is so much hatred, cruelty, and growing antisemitism in the world,” she said. “I truly believe that the miracle of Hanukkah, faith, and wisdom will help us to overcome all obstacles.”
In India, Prime Minister Narendra Modi gave his “warmest greetings to our Jewish friends in India and around the world on the occasion of Hanukkah.” In his social media post, he also tagged Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu while writing, “May this festival bring peace, hope, and brightness in everybody’s lives.”
While the White House and US President Joe Biden have yet to post a Hanukkah message as of this writing, newly minted US Ambassador to Israel Jack Lew posted that he spent the first night of the festival with families of the hostages seized by Hamas on Oct. 7.
“On this first night of Hanukkah, I joined the families of the hostages and together we lit a candle for each of the [remaining] 138 hostages,” he wrote. “Amid this tragic war, we are reminded that light in the end triumphs over darkness. We will not stop working until all hostages are back home.”
On this first night of Hanukkah, I joined the families of the hostages and together we lit a candle for each of the 138 hostages. Amid this tragic war, we are reminded that light in the end triumphs over darkness. We will not stop working until all hostages are back home. pic.twitter.com/p5TxEf0usH
— Ambassador Jack Lew (@USAmbIsrael) December 7, 2023
The official X/Twitter account for the state of Israel also posted a message marking the start of the festival of lights.
“Hanukkah is all about the resilience of the Jewish people. It’s about the victory of light over darkness,” the post read. “This Hanukkah is a difficult one, but Jewish history has taught us one thing. We will prevail. As we light the first candle tonight, we pray for the return of our hostages and the safety of our men and women in uniform.”
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Trump Proposes Resettlement of Gazans as Netanyahu Visits White House
US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu meet at the White House in Washington, DC, US, Feb. 4, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday proposed the resettlement of Palestinians from Gaza to neighboring countries, calling the enclave a “demolition site” and saying residents have “no alternative” as he held critical talks with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House.
“[The Palestinians] have no alternative right now” but to leave Gaza, Trump told reporters before Netanyahu arrived. “I mean, they’re there because they have no alternative. What do they have? It is a big pile of rubble right now.”
Trump repeated his call for Egypt, Jordan, and other Arab states in the region to take in Palestinians from Gaza after nearly 16 months of war there between Israel and the Palestinian terrorist group Hamas, which ruled the enclave before the war and remains the dominant faction.
Arab leaders have adamantly rejected Trump’s proposal. However, Trump argued on Tuesday that Palestinians would benefit from leaving Gaza and expressed astonishment at the notion that they would want to remain.
“Look, the Gaza thing has not worked. It’s never worked. And I feel very differently about Gaza than a lot of people. I think they should get a good, fresh, beautiful piece of land. We’ll get some people to put up the money to build it and make it nice and make it habitable and enjoyable,” Trump said.
Referring to Gaza as a “pure demolition site,” the president said he doesn’t “know how they [Palestinians] could want to stay” when asked about the reaction of Palestinian and Arab leaders to his proposal.
“If we could find the right piece of land, or numerous pieces of land, and build them some really nice places, there’s plenty of money in the area, that’s for sure,” Trump continued. “I think that would be a lot better than going back to Gaza, which has had decades and decades of death.”
However, Trump clarified that he does “not necessarily” support Israel permanently annexing and resettling Gaza.
Trump later made similar remarks with Netanyahu at his side in the Oval Office, suggesting that Palestinians should leave Gaza for good “in nice homes and where they can be happy and not be shot, not be killed.”
“They are not going to want to go back to Gaza,” he said.
Trump did not offer any specifics about how a resettlement process could be implemented.
The post-war future of Palestinians in Gaza has loomed as a major point of contention within both the United States and Israel. The former Biden administration emphatically rejected the notion of relocating Gaza civilians, demanding a humanitarian aid “surge” into the beleaguered enclave.
Trump has previously hinted at support for relocating Gaza civilians. Last month, the president said he would like to “just clean out” Gaza and resettle residents in Jordan or Egypt.
Steve Witkoff, the US special envoy to the Middle East, defended Trump’s comments in a Tuesday press conference, arguing that Gaza will remain uninhabitable for the foreseeable future.
“When the president talks about ‘cleaning it out,’ he talks about making it habitable,” Witkoff said. “It is unfair to have explained to Palestinians that they might be back in five years. That’s just preposterous.
Trump’s comments were immediately met with backlash, with some observers accusing him of supporting an ethnic cleansing plan. However, proponents of the proposal argue that it could offer Palestinians a better future and would mitigate the threat posed by Hamas.
Hamas-led Palestinian terrorists started the Gaza war on Oct. 7, 2023, when they invaded southern Israel, murdered 1,200 people, and kidnapped 251 hostages back to Gaza while perpetrating widespread sexual violence in what was the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust.
Israel responded with a military campaign aimed at freeing the hostages and dismantling Hamas’s military and governing capabilities in neighboring Gaza.
Last month, both sides reached a Gaza ceasefire and hostage-release deal brokered by the US, Egypt, and Qatar.
Under phase one of the agreement, Hamas will, over six weeks, free a total of 33 Israeli hostages, eight of whom are deceased, and in exchange, Israel will release over 1,900 Palestinian prisoners, many of whom are serving multiple life sentences for terrorist activity. Meanwhile, fighting in Gaza will stop as negotiators work on agreeing to a second phase of the agreement, which is expected to include Hamas releasing all remaining hostages held in Gaza and the complete withdrawal of Israeli forces from the enclave.
The ceasefire and the future of Gaza were expected to be key topics of conversation between Trump and Netanyahu, along with the possibility of Israel and Saudi Arabia normalizing relations and Iran’s nuclear program.
Riyadh has indicated that any normalization agreement with Israel would need to include an end to the Gaza war and the pathway to the formation of a Palestinian state.
However, perhaps the most strategically important subject will be Iran, particularly how to contain its nuclear program and combat its support for terrorist proxies across the Middle East. In recent weeks, many analysts have raised questions over whether Trump would support an Israeli strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities, which both Washington and Jerusalem fear are meant to ultimately develop nuclear weapons.
Netanyahu on Tuesday was the first foreign leader to visit the White House since Trump’s inauguration last month.
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Trump Reimposes ‘Maximum Pressure’ on Iran, Aims to Drive Oil Exports to Zero
US President Donald Trump speaks at the White House, in Washington, DC, Feb. 3, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Elizabeth Frantz
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday restored his “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran that includes efforts to drive its oil exports down to zero in order to stop Tehran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
Ahead of his meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump signed the presidential memorandum reimposing Washington’s tough policy on Iran that was practiced throughout his first term.
As he signed the memo, Trump described it as very tough and said he was torn on whether to make the move. He said he was open to a deal with Iran and expressed a willingness to talk to the Iranian leader.
“With me, it’s very simple: Iran cannot have a nuclear weapon,” Trump said. Asked how close Tehran is to a weapon, Trump said: “They’re too close.”
Iran‘s mission to the United Nations in New York did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Trump has accused former President Joe Biden of failing to rigorously enforce oil-export sanctions, which Trump says emboldened Tehran by allowing it to sell oil to fund a nuclear weapons program and armed militias in the Middle East.
Iran is “dramatically” accelerating enrichment of uranium to up to 60 percent purity, close to the roughly 90 percent weapons-grade level, the UN nuclear watchdog chief told Reuters in December. Iran has denied wanting to develop a nuclear weapon.
Trump‘s memo, among other things, orders the US Treasury secretary to impose “maximum economic pressure” on Iran, including sanctions and enforcement mechanisms on those violating existing sanctions.
It also directs the Treasury and State Department to implement a campaign aimed at “driving Iran‘s oil exports to zero.” US oil prices pared losses on Tuesday on the news that Trump planned to sign the memo, which offset some weakness from the tariff drama between Washington and Beijing.
Tehran’s oil exports brought in $53 billion in 2023 and $54 billion a year earlier, according to US Energy Information Administration estimates. Output during 2024 was running at its highest level since 2018, based on OPEC data.
Trump had driven Iran‘s oil exports to near-zero during part of his first term after re-imposing sanctions. They rose under Biden’s tenure as Iran succeeded in evading sanctions.
The Paris-based International Energy Agency believes Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, and other OPEC members have spare capacity to make up for any lost exports from Iran, also an OPEC member.
PUSH FOR SANCTIONS SNAPBACK
China does not recognize US sanctions and Chinese firms buy the most Iranian oil. China and Iran have also built a trading system that uses mostly Chinese yuan and a network of middlemen, avoiding the dollar and exposure to US regulators.
Kevin Book, an analyst at ClearView Energy, said the Trump administration could enforce the 2024 Stop Harboring Iranian Petroleum (SHIP) law to curtail some Iranian barrels.
SHIP, which the Biden administration did not enforce strictly, allows measures on foreign ports and refineries that process petroleum exported from Iran in violation of sanctions. Book said a move last month by the Shandong Port Group to ban US-sanctioned tankers from calling into its ports in the eastern Chinese province signals the impact SHIP could have.
Trump also directed his UN ambassador to work with allies to “complete the snapback of international sanctions and restrictions on Iran,” under a 2015 deal between Iran and key world powers that lifted sanctions on Tehran in return for restrictions on its nuclear program.
The US quit the agreement in 2018, during Trump‘s first term, and Iran began moving away from its nuclear-related commitments under the deal. The Trump administration had also tried to trigger a snapback of sanctions under the deal in 2020, but the move was dismissed by the UN Security Council.
Britain, France, and Germany told the United Nations Security Council in December that they are ready — if necessary — to trigger a snapback of all international sanctions on Iran to prevent the country from acquiring a nuclear weapon.
They will lose the ability to take such action on Oct. 18 when a 2015 UN resolution expires. The resolution enshrines Iran‘s deal with Britain, Germany, France, the United States, Russia, and China that lifted sanctions on Tehran in exchange for restrictions on its nuclear program.
Iran‘s UN ambassador, Amir Saeid Iravani, has said that invoking the “snap-back” of sanctions on Tehran would be “unlawful and counterproductive.”
European and Iranian diplomats met in November and January to discuss if they could work to defuse regional tensions, including over Tehran’s nuclear program, before Trump returned.
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Trump Stops US Involvement With UN Rights Body, Extends UNRWA Funding Halt
An UNRWA aid truck at the Rafah border crossing between Egypt and the Gaza Strip. Photo: Reuters/Amr Abdallah Dalsh
US President Donald Trump on Tuesday ordered an end to US engagement with the United Nations Human Rights Council and continued a halt to funding for the UN Palestinian relief agency UNRWA.
The move coincides with a visit to Washington by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has long been critical of UNRWA, accusing it of anti-Israel incitement and its staff of being “involved in terrorist activities against Israel.”
During Trump‘s first term in office, from 2017-2021, he also cut off funding for UNRWA, questioning its value, saying that Palestinians needed to agree to renew peace talks with Israel, and calling for unspecified reforms.
The first Trump administration also quit the 47-member Human Rights Council halfway through a three-year term over what it called chronic bias against Israel and a lack of reform. The US is not currently a member of the Geneva-based body. Under former President Joe Biden, the US served a 2022-2024 term.
A council working group is due to review the US human rights record later this year, a process all countries undergo every few years. While the council has no legally binding power, its debates carry political weight and criticism can raise global pressure on governments to change course.
Since taking office for a second term on Jan. 20, Trump has ordered that the US withdraw from the World Health Organization and from the Paris climate agreement — also steps he took during his first term in office.
The US was UNRWA’s biggest donor — providing $300 million-$400 million a year — but Biden paused funding in January 2024 after Israel accused about a dozen UNRWA staff of taking part in the deadly Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel by Palestinian terrorist group Hamas that triggered the war in Gaza.
The US Congress then formally suspended contributions to UNRWA until at least March 2025.
The United Nations has said that nine UNRWA staff may have been involved in the Oct. 7, 2023, attack and were fired. A Hamas commander in Lebanon — killed in September by Israel — was also found to have had a UNRWA job.
An Israeli ban went into effect on Jan. 30 that prohibits UNRWA from operating on its territory or communicating with Israeli authorities. UNRWA has said operations in Gaza and West Bank will also suffer.
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