A gunman took hostages in a Colleyville synagogue. Hours later, the hostages walked out alive and the attacker was dead. The relief was real. So is the warning.
Antisemitism is not a relic. It adapts to the language of the moment, hitching a ride on every wave of grievance and conspiracy. It finds targets in houses of worship because hate prefers symbols that stand for continuity and belonging. That is the point of terror—to make community feel like risk.
Security expands, clergy learn drills, congregants eye exits. Faith spaces turn into semi-fortified rooms where welcome has to share space with vigilance. The country shrugs and calls it the price of freedom. It isn’t. It’s the cost of refusing to confront how quickly rhetoric turns to permission and permission to violence.
Gratitude for skilled officers and negotiators should sit beside an obligation to starve the ecosystem that feeds the next attacker. Otherwise we will celebrate survivals while normalizing the siege.