Israeli Foreign Minister Urges Diaspora Jews to Come Home

As Jews across the world light the final candles of Chanukah, Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saar issued an emotional and urgent call: come home. In a powerful address delivered at a candle-lighting ceremony in Rishon LeZion, Saar implored Jews from the diaspora to make aliyah, warning that antisemitic violence has reached alarming new heights globally while foreign governments fail to offer meaningful protection.

“Today, Jews are being hunted across the world,” Saar said. “We demanded that foreign governments take real steps against the new antisemitism. Few did so. Most allowed an unrestrained surge of overt antisemitism in the public sphere.”

His remarks follow a horrifying terror attack at a Chanukah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, where 15 people were killed and dozens more injured. That massacre is just the latest in a disturbing pattern of violence targeting Jewish communities since Hamas's brutal October 7 invasion of Israel. Attacks have spanned continents from the murder of Israeli embassy staffers in Washington, DC, to the firebombing of a pro-Israel march in Boulder, Colorado, to a deadly Yom Kippur assault in Manchester.

These incidents are no longer isolated events they reflect a chilling trend. In the UK, a recent survey by the Campaign Against Antisemitism revealed that more than half of British Jews believe they have no long-term future in the country or in Europe. Nearly 60 percent say they avoid visibly displaying their Jewish identity out of fear, and 96 percent feel less safe since October 7. Perhaps most damning, only 14 percent feel protected by the police.

France, too, has seen antisemitism not only in the streets but even in its politics. The mayor of Augignac was expelled from the French Socialist Party after making antisemitic remarks about Israel’s participation in Eurovision, sparking national outrage. But despite the condemnation, violence continues.

Just this week, Jews in Istanbul were harassed on their way to a Chanukah event, targeted by pro-Palestinian protesters chanting anti-Zionist slogans. In Cyprus, an Israeli man was assaulted outside his hotel in Limassol simply for speaking Hebrew. He had to be flown to Israel for emergency surgery after sustaining serious head and eye injuries.

Amid this surge of violence and hostility, Saar’s message was clear: “Come to the Land of Israel. Come home. We are waiting for you here with open arms. With love. In the true home of the Jewish people.”

“Why raise your children in this atmosphere?” he asked. “Come with your families to the land of our forefathers, to the State of Israel, where the Jews taught the entire world what Jewish self-defense means. The time has come.”

In the face of escalating hatred, Israel remains a sanctuary a nation built for moments like these, where Jewish people can live with pride, security, and sovereignty. The message from Jerusalem is more than a call to aliyah it’s a reaffirmation that Israel stands as the eternal home for the Jewish people, offering safety not through silence, but through strength.

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