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Source: https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-880974
Are Christmas, Hanukkah, New Year's in Danger?
(Jerusalem Post) Amb. Alan Baker - The recent bestial Muslim terrorist attack against Australian Jews celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on Dec. 14 at Bondi Beach in Sydney follows a growing pattern of systematic Islamist-inspired violence and intimidation deliberately directed against innocent civilians celebrating their traditional religious festivals and civic holidays in Western societies. A Dec. 2016 terrorist attack on a Christmas market in Berlin left 12 people murdered and dozens wounded. In 2018, a similar Islamist attack at a Christmas market killed five people in Strasbourg, France. On Dec. 21, 2024, five people were killed when a vehicle rammed into a Christmas market in Magdeburg, Germany, injuring 200 others. Islamist, anti-religious, anti-Christian, and antisemitic violence is now spreading across Western societies like wildfire. In November 2025, the German town of Overath cancelled its traditional Christmas market, citing prohibitive security costs. Similar cancellations have occurred in Dresden, Rostock, and elsewhere in Germany. In France, Paris authorities cancelled the annual New Year's Eve celebrations on the Champs-Elysees, which last year drew close to a million celebrants. In Brussels in Dec. 2025, Islamist groups overran the Christmas market, forcing Christian families to flee in fear. In Milan, Islamist agitators disrupted festivities and imposed Palestinian flags on celebrants. This atmosphere of fear has also penetrated educational and cultural institutions. In Andover, England, a primary school informed parents that there would be no reference to Christmas in the school's festive performance "in order to be inclusive." In Denmark, kindergartens and schools have been cancelling or diluting Christmas celebrations for years to avoid offending Muslim sensitivities. How long will Western democracies, seemingly fixated on appeasing Muslim pressures, continue to erode their own Judeo-Christian traditions to avoid offending migrant sensitivities? How long will political correctness, misplaced guilt, and cultural appeasement override common sense and historical continuity? Once-proud democracies with rich religious and civic traditions - including Australia, Canada, the UK, Germany, France, and Italy - appear increasingly unable or unwilling to defend their own cultural heritage. The writer, former Legal Adviser and Deputy Director-General of Israel's Ministry of Foreign Affairs, heads the international law program at the Jerusalem Center for Security and Foreign Affairs.