Yet I am convinced that, like Kristallnacht before World War II and the Holocaust, the attack in Sydney was not an isolated incident but an opening act. The question is what conditions made it inevitable and why those conditions now exist across the democratic world. Four months ago, ahead of the Jewish New Year, I sent a letter to my extended family in Australia. Not because of what the Jewish state does, but because of what it has stopped saying. And for Americans, the lesson is unavoidable: a weak and apologetic Israel does not stabilize the democratic world.