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As Slovenia takes a hard line against Israel, its tiny Jewish community feels increasingly isolated
(JTA) — LJUBLJANA, Slovenia — In June 2024, Slovenia’s parliament voted to recognize a Palestinian state only one week after Spain, Ireland and Norway had taken that dramatic step.
Half a year later, Slovenian public broadcaster RTV — citing the ongoing war in Gaza—became the first in Europe to demand Israel’s exclusion from the 2025 Eurovision Song Contest. This past May, RTV warned it might boycott future editions of Eurovision if Israel isn’t expelled.
Over the summer, Slovenia banned imports from Jewish settlements in the West Bank, only a week after prohibiting all weapons trade with Israel — the first EU member to do so. That ruling followed on the heels of another one declaring two right-wing Israeli officials persona non grata. Last week, it became the first EU country to impose a travel ban on Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
“People are dying in Gaza because they are systematically denied humanitarian aid,” the government said in announcing the arms embargo. “In such circumstances, it is the duty of every responsible country to act, even if that means taking a step before others do.”
Some analysts have pegged the aggressive anti-Israel stance as a gambit ahead of the country’s upcoming elections, when the country’s pro-Israel right will try to retake control after losing power in 2022.
But for Slovenia’s roughly 100 Jews, the campaign against Israel is part of a pattern of hostility that transcends the vagaries of politics. Barely five years ago under a right-wing government, a Slovene court voided the 1946 treason conviction of executed Nazi collaborator Leon Rupnik, who nearly liquidated the country’s Jewish population.
“Slovenes always want to be on the side of the underdog, and the media perception over the last 40 years is of poor Palestinians and big, imperialist Israel who took their land,” said Robert Waltl, president of the Liberal Jewish Community of Slovenia. “But now, because of the war, it’s worse here than any other former Yugoslav republic.”
Waltl spoke to JTA from his office at the Mini Theater, which since 2013 has also housed the Jewish Cultural Center and Slovenia’s only active synagogue. The 500-year-old building, which Waltl renovated with $1.6 million in donations, fronts Krizevniska Street in Ljubljana’s old city.
Its 6,500 square feet — crammed with prayer books, menorahs, historic photographs and an entire exhibit on the Holocaust — has become the focus of Jewish culture in Slovenia, with 2.1 million people the smallest and most prosperous of the six republics that once comprised Yugoslavia.
Unlike neighboring Croatia — whose center-right government has pursued a stridently pro-Israel policy despite a rising, homegrown fascist movement — Slovenia has veered sharply to the left in recent years.
“Christian antisemitism was very visible here before World War II,” Waltl, 60, explained as his dog, Umbra, repeatedly barked at passersby. “At the beginning of the 20th century, there was no university here, so people studied in Vienna — and the mayor of Vienna was very antisemitic. Students learned it there and brought it back home with them.”
The presence of Jews in Slovenia dates back to Roman times, with the first synagogue in Ljubljana built around 1213. During the Middle Ages, the most important community was in Maribor, though Jews were expelled from that town in 1496, and then from Ljubljana in 1515.
By the early 20th century, Slovenia’s Prekmurje region had become home to two-thirds of the country’s 1,400 Jews, mostly in the towns of Murska Sobota and Lendava. Yet antisemitism was pervasive; an outbreak of Jew-hatred during the 1929 economic crisis followed accusations that Jewish moneylenders were profiting from exorbitant interest rates. By the end of World War II, the Nazis and their collaborators had killed all but a handful of the country’s Jewish inhabitants.
During Israel’s 1948 War of Independence, Yugoslavia under Tito helped the fledgling Jewish state, but later, as head of the Non-Aligned Movement, he befriended Yasser Arafat and switched his allegiance. After Yugoslavia disintegrated in the early 1990s, the region was plunged into years of ethnic warfare that left an estimated 130,000 dead and millions homeless.
Only Slovenia escaped serious bloodshed, with only 62 deaths reported during its 10-day war of independence against the dominant republic, Serbia. Nevertheless, the Alpine republic — the same one that has just declared an arms embargo against Israel — became embroiled in a massive scandal involving weapons sales to Croatia and Bosnia & Herzegovina, both of which were fighting Serbia, despite a 1991 United Nations arms embargo.
Waltl said his country’s policy toward Israel, as well as domestic media, is riddled with hypocrisy and misinformation.
“In Croatia, the government strongly criticized what Hamas did on Oct. 7 and they stand with Israel. In Slovenia, it was the same for the first few days, but then all attention shifted to the plight of the Palestinians,” he said. “Today in Slovenia, 99% of the media isn’t just pro-Palestinian but anti-Israel. You will never hear that Israel was attacked by Hamas or Hezbollah, only that Israelis kill women and children.”
He added: “It’s also true, however, that the right-wing government in Israel has crossed all acceptable lines and limits of humanity, triggering a wave of hatred towards Jews worldwide.”
It doesn’t help that Israel has never established an embassy in Ljubljana — even though Slovenia has maintained one in Tel Aviv for the past 30 years.
Polona Vetrih, a prominent stage actress whose father survived World War II as a partisan, said she’s had several unpleasant encounters with local antisemites. Recently, she sang at a peace concert where she performed the Ladino song “Adios Querida.”
“One girl from Palestine was very loud. She was screaming, and they threatened me. I was scared to death,” she said. “I went to the police afterwards.”
Frequently, she hears Slovenes complain that Jews are mean and think only of themselves.
“They don’t have a clue. Even during the Middle Ages, they blamed Jews for the plague,” she said. “I think it’s up to us to show them it’s not true.”
During communism, Slovenia had virtually no organized Jewish life. In 1991, the Liberal Jewish Community was established, and in 2002, local Jews contracted with a Chabad rabbi from Trieste, Italy, to conduct High Holiday services. The following year, said Waltl, the community received a Torah scroll from a British donor, and turned a nearby cigarette factory into a small synagogue with the help of the American Joint Jewish Distribution Committee.
Ten years ago, with the help of Lustig Branko — producer of the film “Schindler’s List” — the museum established a Festival of Tolerance. Last year, some 6,000 elementary school students came to see performances of “The Diary of Anne Frank.” Currently, liberal rabbis Alexander Grodensky of Luxembourg and Tobias Moss of Vienna visit Slovenia for special occasions.
In April 2024, a 10-member delegation from the World Jewish Congress traveled to Slovenia to meet with government officials, but they were ignored, Waltl said. And when swastikas were discovered scrawled on the walls of the Jewish Cultural Center one night, he said, “no one from the government came, and no one called me — not even the mayor of the city.”
Maya Samakovlija, the organization’s executive director of community relations, went even further.
“We were not merely ignored. What happened to us is something no other government in the world has done ever in the long history of the WJC,” said Samakovlija, who is based in Zagreb, Croatia. “Neither the prime minister, the president, the speaker of parliament, nor the minister of foreign affairs made any effort to meet with us. Instead, they sent only deputies and lower-ranking officials.”
At that meeting, Blanka Jamnišek, deputy head of Slovenia’s delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, asked the visitors what they were doing “to promote a ceasefire and stop the killing of children, and the famine in Gaza,” according to Samakovlija and a statement that the AJC released at the time. The IHRA definition of antisemitism cites holding Jews collectively responsible for Israel’s actions as an example of antisemitism.
“Her colleagues were visibly shocked,” the WJC official said. “Once she had finished, I made the decision that we’d leave as a delegation. We stood up, ended the meeting and walked out.”
Ernest Herzog, the WJC’s executive director of operations, was also part of that delegation. He said Slovenia’s Jews “face an alarming rise in antisemitism, evident in acts of vandalism, threats and hostile rhetoric.”
“It is deeply troubling that certain officials have sought to justify this climate of intolerance through a distorted interpretation of the Middle East conflict — an excuse that is wholly unacceptable,” he added.
Politicians on the right more often support Israel. This past April, the Slovenia-Israel Allies Caucus was established by lawmaker Žan Mahnič of the Slovenian Democratic Party. Former Slovene Prime Minister Janez Janša, who supports the caucus, has said that if he returns to power, he will relocate his country’s embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and rescind Ljubljana’s recognition of Palestine.
Steve Oberman, an attorney in Knoxville, Tennessee, and past president of that city’s Arnstein Jewish Community Center, visited Slovenia in 2024 to teach a law class at the University of Ljubljana. He has since become a passionate defender of Waltl’s efforts.
“I’m disappointed that the Slovenian government isn’t doing a better job of supporting the Jewish community of Slovenia, given the country’s history,” Oberman told JTA in a phone interview. “Poor Robert has carried this task, almost singlehandedly, to revive Jewish life there and create a synagogue. I’m trying to work through our local Jewish community here in Knoxville to raise awareness, and hopefully some money.”
Meanwhile, the situation for the few Jews remaining in Slovenia isn’t getting easier.
Sophia Huzbasic, a native of Kyrgyzstan who lived for a time in Israel but settled in Slovenia nine years ago, said she was born with Soviet citizenship but chose to retain her Israeli passport.
A graphic designer, she lives in Ljubljana with her husband Igor, who’s from Sarajevo, Bosnia.
“For local Jews, I truly believe the antisemitism is really terrible,” she said. “I was raised in Moscow in the 1990s, so for me this is nothing. I’m not scared but I’m angry.”
Huzbasic, 43, said her bank refused to approve a car lease when officials learned she was an Israeli citizen — just one example, she said, of the insidious antisemitism that seems to be prevalent.
“We feel very angry because of the official position of the Slovenian government. What they’re doing is propaganda from a very poorly educated point of view, and they don’t want to widen their knowledge about the conflict,” Huzbasic said. “I totally disagree with the Israeli political situation, and I chose to keep my Israeli citizenship and live here. But now I’m very close to changing my mind. I cannot stop being a Jew.”
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The call of this Hanukkah moment remains simple and urgent: Light candles everywhere. Even when we’re under attack.
The massacre in Sydney has left Jews around the world shaken and grieving. This act is far more than a heinous crime: It is a regression to darker times, when Jewish visibility itself carried mortal risk.
The commandment of Hanukkah is not simply to light candles, but to light them publicly – pirsumei nisa, the publicizing of the miracle. The point is not private consolation, but shared visibility. Jewish survival, the tradition teaches, is not meant to occur behind closed doors, but in full view.
Historically, however, it rarely did. In exile, Jews learned caution. The Talmud records how, in times of danger, the candles are to be moved indoors – lit discreetly, shielded from hostile eyes. This was not a theological revision but a concession to reality: When the public sphere is unsafe, Jewish life retreats into the private domain. For most of our history, this was our reality.
Modern democracies promised something different. Jews would no longer have to choose between safety and visibility. We could light openly again – on windowsills, in public squares, in front of city halls – because the surrounding society would protect us not merely by law, but by norm. Antisemitism would not just be illegal, it would be unthinkable.
The Sydney massacre, alongside countless incidents in societies Jews have long trusted, forces us to ask whether that promise is still being kept.
Jewish safety in the diaspora does not rest primarily on police presence or intelligence services – necessary though they are. It rests on something more fragile and more fundamental: a public culture in which Jews are not merely tolerated but embraced; in which antisemitism is not merely condemned after the fact but rejected instinctively and unequivocally as a violation of the moral order.
When Jews are attacked for being Jews, and the response is muted, conditional, or delayed, the message is unmistakable. Jews may still live here, but only quietly.
That is why the response to Sydney must not be withdrawal, but the exact opposite. We cannot and will not retreat into hiding our light. The call of this moment is simple and urgent: Light candles everywhere.
Jewish communities and organizations must orchestrate public Hanukkah candle lightings in the central squares of democratic cities across Europe, across the English-speaking world, wherever Jews live under the protection of free societies. Not hidden ceremonies. Not fenced-off gatherings on the margins. But civic events, hosted openly and proudly, with the participation of local and national leaders – and of fellow non-Jewish citizens.
This is not unprecedented. Every year, a Hanukkah menorah is lit at the White House. The symbolism is powerful precisely because it is mundane: Jewish light belongs at the heart of the civic space, not as an exception, not as an act of charity, but as a matter of course. That model should now be replicated widely.
Israeli diplomatic missions, together with local Jewish organizations, should work actively with municipalities and governments to make these public lightings happen – not merely as acts of Jewish resilience, but as declarations of democratic commitment. Because this is not only a Jewish question.
A society in which Jews feel compelled to hide their symbols is a society already retreating from its own values. Antisemitism is never a stand-alone phenomenon; it is the canary in the democratic coal mine. Where Jews are unsafe, pluralism is already fraying.
Lighting candles in public squares will not undo the horror of Sydney. But it will answer it – not with fear, and not with silence, but with a refusal to normalize xenophobia, antisemitism, and Jewish invisibility.
The ancient question of Hanukkah – where we light – has returned as a modern moral test of democratic societies and leaders worldwide. Where Jewish light is extinguished, democracy itself is cast into shadow. If it can still be lit openly, with the full backing of the societies Jews call home, then the promise of democratic life remains alive.
Our light must not hide. Not now. Never again.
The post The call of this Hanukkah moment remains simple and urgent: Light candles everywhere. Even when we’re under attack. appeared first on The Forward.
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Australia shooting terrifies Jews worldwide — and strengthens the case for Israel
If the shooters who targeted Jews on a beach in Australia while they were celebrating Hanukkah thought their cowardly act would turn the world against Israel, they were exactly wrong: Randomly killing people at a holiday festival in Sydney makes the case for Israel.
The world wants Jews to disown Israel over Gaza, but bad actors keep proving why Jews worldwide feel such an intense need to have a Jewish state.
Think about it. The vast majority of Jews who settled in Israel went there because they felt they had nowhere else to go. To call the modern state “the ingathering of exiles” softpedals reality and tells only half the story. The ingathering was a result of an outpouring of hate and violence.
Attacking Jews is the best way to rationalize Zionism.
Judaism’s holidays are often (humorously) summarized as, “They tried to kill us, they failed, let’s eat.” Zionism is simply, “They tried to kill us, they failed, let’s move.”
Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern Zionism, didn’t have a religious or even a tribal bone in his body. He would have been happy to stay in Vienna writing light plays and eating sacher torte. But bearing witness to the rise of antisemitism, he saw the Land of Israel as the European Jew’s best option.
The Eastern European pogroms, the Holocaust, the massacre of Jews in Iraq in 1941 — seven years before the State of Israel was founded — the attacks on Jews throughout the Middle East after Israel’s founding, the oppression of Jews in the former Soviet Union — these were what sent Jews to Israel.
How many Australians are thinking the same way this dark morning?
There’s a lot to worry about in Israel. It is, statistically, more dangerous to be Jewish there than anywhere else in the world. But most Jews would rather take their chances on a state created to protect them, instead of one that just keeps promising it will – especially when the government turns a blind eye to antisemitic incitement and refuses to crack down on violent protests, as Australia has.
“For over a year we have seen racist mobs impeding on the rights and freedoms of ordinary Australians. We have been locked out of parts of our cities because the police could not ensure our safety. Students have been told to stay away from campuses. We have been locked down in synagogues,” Alex Ryvchin, the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, wrote a year ago, after the firebombing attack on a Melbourne synagogue.
Since then a childcare centre in Sydney’s east was set alight by vandals, cars were firebombed, two Australian nurses threatened to kill Jewish patients, to name a few antisemitic incidents. There were 1,654 antisemitic incidents logged in Australia from October 2024 to September 2025 — in a country with about 117,000 Jews.
“The most dangerous thing about terrorism is the over-reaction to it,” the philosopher Yuval Noah Harari said. He was talking about the invasion of Iraq after 9/11, the crackdown on civil liberties and legitimate protest. But surely it’s equally dangerous to underreact to terrorism and terrorist rhetoric.
Israel’s destruction of Gaza following the Hamas attack of Oct. 7, 2023 led to worldwide protests, which is understandable, if not central to why tensions have escalated.
But condemning civilian casualties and calling for Palestinian self-determination — something many Jews support — too often crosses into calls for destroying Israel, demonizing Israelis and their Jews. That’s how Jews heard the phrase “globalize the intifada” — as a justification for the indiscriminate violence against civilians.
When they took issue with protesters cosplaying as Hamas and justifying the Oct. 7 massacre, that’s what they meant. And look at what happened in Bondi Beach, they weren’t wrong. Violence leads to violence, and so does support for violence.
Chabad, which hosted the Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, has always leaned toward a more open door policy with less apparent security than other Jewish institutions. But one of the reasons it has been so effective at outreach has also made it an easy target.
As a result of the Bondi shooting, Chabad will likely increase security, as will synagogues around the world. Jewish institutions will think hard about publicly advertising their events. Law enforcement and public officials will, thankfully, step up protection, at least for a while. These are all the predictable result of an attack that, given the unchecked antisemitic rhetoric and weak responses to previous antisemitic incidents, was all but inevitable.
It’s not inevitable that Australian Jews would now move to Israel, no more than it would have been for Pittsburgh’s Jewish community to uproot itself and move to Tel Aviv after the 2018 Tree of Life massacre. That didn’t happen, because ultimately the risk still doesn’t justify it.
But these shootings, and the constant drip of violent rhetoric, vandalism and confrontation raise a question: If you want to kill Jews in Israel, and you kill them outside Israel, where, exactly, are we supposed to go?
The post Australia shooting terrifies Jews worldwide — and strengthens the case for Israel appeared first on The Forward.
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These are the victims of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration shooting in Sydney
(JTA) — A local rabbi, a Holocaust survivor and a 12-year-old girl are among those killed during the shooting attack Sunday on a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney, Australia.
Here’s what we know about the 11 people murdered in the attack, which took place at a popular beachside playground where more than 1,000 people had congregated to celebrate the first night of the holiday, as well as about those injured.
This story will be updated.
Eli Schlanger, rabbi and father of five
Schlanger was the Chabad emissary in charge of Chabad of Bondi, which had organized the event. He had grown up in England but moved to Sydney 18 years ago, where he was raising his five children with his wife Chaya. Their youngest was born just two months ago.
In addition to leading community events through Chabad of Bondi, Schlanger worked with Jewish prisoners in Australian prisons. “He flew all around the state, to go visit different people in jail, literally at his own expense,” Mendy Litzman, a Sydney Jew who responded as a medic to the attack, told the Jewish Telegraphic Agency.
Last year, amid a surge in antisemitic incidents in Australia, Schlanger posted a video of himself dancing and celebrating Hanukkah, promoting lighting menorahs as “the best response to antisemitism.”
The best response to antisemitism. Happy Chanukah! pic.twitter.com/33RSGYzhUY
— Rabbi Eli Schlanger (@SchlangerEli) December 17, 2024
Two months before his murder, he published an open letter to Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese urging him to rescind his “act of betrayal” of the Jewish people. The letter was published on Facebook the same day, Sept. 21, that Albanese announced he would unilaterally recognize an independent Palestinian state.
Alex Kleytman, Holocaust survivor originally from Ukraine
Kleytman had come to the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration annually for years, his wife Larisa told The Australian. She said he was protecting her when he was shot. The couple, married for six decades, has two children and 11 grandchildren.
The Australia reported that Kleytman was a Holocaust survivor who had passed World War II living with his family in Siberia.
12-year-old girl
Alex Ryvchin, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told CNN that a friend “lost his 12-year-old daughter, who succumbed to her wounds in hospital.” The girl’s name was not immediately released.
Dozens of people were injured
- Yossi Lazaroff, the Chabad rabbi at Texas A&M University, said his son had been shot while running the event for Chabad of Bondi. “Please say Psalms 20 & 21 for my son, Rabbi Leibel Lazaroff, יהודה לייב בן מאניא who was shot in a terrorist attack at a Chanukah event he was running for Chabad of Bondi in Sydney, Australia,” he tweeted.
- Yaakov “Yanky” Super, 24, was on duty for Hatzalah at the event when he was shot in the back, Litzman said. “He started screaming on his radio that he needs back up, he was shot. I heard it and I responded to the scene. I was the closest backup. I was one of the first medical people on the scene,” Litzman said. He added, “We just went into action and saved a lot of lives, including one of our own.”
The post These are the victims of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration shooting in Sydney appeared first on The Forward.