PM lights Hanukkah candles with Chabad emissaries week after Sydney attack: ‘We will prevail’

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu lights the candles for the eighth night of Hanukkah in Jerusalem with emissaries from the Chabad movement, a week after a Chabad Hanukkah gathering was attacked by antisemitic gunmen in a massacre in Sydney, Australia.

“Chabad and the entire people of Israel went through a great tragedy in Sydney — despicable murderers who killed them because they were Jews, and only because they were Jews,” Netanyahu says, according to his office. “But our spirit has not fallen and will not fall. I have seen this among the emissaries, and in all the Chabad houses that have been attacked in the past as well.”

The attack on Bondi Beach, which killed 15 people, “did not break our spirit; on the contrary,” Netanyahu says. “I have seen the strengthening and the mobilization to action — bringing the people of Israel closer together wherever they are on the face of the earth.”

Netanyahu jokes that he hasn’t checked if there is already a Chabad house in Antarctica, “but I know they’re working on that too.”

The prime minister adds that “we share in the grief, but we also see the greatness and are more determined than ever to ensure the eternity of Israel… We are prevailing — and we will continue to prevail.”