The earth has moved under our feet, and our massive security gamble is crumbling, but the government pretends nothing has happened, writes Michael Pascoe.
Tits on a bull, the Joint Standing Committee on Foreign Affairs, Defence and Trade and the Parliamentary Joint Committee on Intelligence and Security, all same same. The former committee is a random mix of odds and sods – even Ralph Babet – as could be assembled, the latter stacked with fans of last century’s security stories, devotees of Pax Americana, fed and watered by the local and American security establishment
“to think no further than their outdated Anglosphere prejudices.“
This was the year the earth moved for Australia’s security, while our timid government kept its head under the pillows, desperately hoping it would not have to face up to the changes and challenges, praying its political strategy of copying coalition policy would help keep it safe at the polls. What’s Labor’s main security concern? How it looks in khaki on election day.
Can the opposition come up with a more pro-American defence spokesman than Richard Marles? No. Labor remains safe on the security right flank that was traditionally Liberal high ground.
With the Albanese/Marles/Wong government devoted to exerting discipline, quashing dissent and going all the way with Donald J, Australia’s national security future goes unexamined while its current blueprint burns.
Strategic failure
We have proven ourselves to be rich in the greatest strategic failure: lacking imagination. Our defence establishment – politicians, spooks, bureaucrats, military, salespeople, foreign agents – could not imagine the change that has been foisted on them, could not conceive any future for Australia other than one embedded in the American military armpit,
can’t grasp that the game has irreversibly changed.
Now, as America changes faster than anyone dared guess, we pursue the path of failure that comes from not believing what is happening. Having explicitly bet our strategic future on America always protecting us, that that is our only hope for survival, it is too painful for the establishment to face up to America withdrawing, to being proven wrong.
Australia Deputy Sheriff
There have been rare and largely ignored voices forecasting what is happening under Trump. A decade ago, Geoff Raby warned of the US eventually withdrawing from Western Pacific domination, leaving Deputy Dawg Australia an orphaned shag on a rock. Hugh White, more recently, has made the case that America is in retreat to its core interests.
That has now been spelt out in the Trump administration’s National Security Statement and by its “Secretary for War” Pete Hegseth. America is to be about the Americas, with Europe left to itself, or Russia, and China’s military rise acknowledged and accepted in Asia.
A new reality
Crikey’s Bernard Keane summarised the new reality ($) while highlighting local mainstream media’s failure to examine it, citing a speech last weekend in which Hegseth said the quiet bits out loud:
“Our interests in the Indo-Pacific are significant, but also scoped and reasonable … this includes the ability for us, along with allies, to be postured strongly enough in the Indo-Pacific to balance China’s growing power.
“President Trump and this administration seek a stable peace, fair trade and respectful relations with China…this involves respecting the historic military buildup they are undertaking.”
Keane concluded Hegseth had said the unthinkable: the US aims merely to be present in the Pacific, not to dominate it. It merely seeks to balance China’s power, not defeat it. And it “respects” China’s military build-up.
“Imagine the absolute uproar from the media — and not just from News Corp — if Anthony Albanese had talked about ‘respecting’ China’s military build-up,” Keane posited.
Like the US blatantly committing war crimes and now piracy off the Venezuelan coast, America’s declared security strategy is an embarrassment Australia doesn’t want to see. This is the America which preferences Russia over Europe.
Not “just a phase”
The optimistic view within the defence establishment clinging to American coattails is that Trump, too, will pass and everything will get back to just the way it was.
It won’t. That’s not the way it happens when the world changes. Much of MAGA will prove sticky even if the Democrats reclaim the White House and Congress.
“Having given ground, it’s very difficult to reclaim it.
Not much of Trump 1.0 was overturned by Biden. The tax cuts and Chinese tariffs remained. The domestic chaos created by Trump will be more than enough for a Democrat administration to wrestle with, if there is a Democrat administration next.
America is set for so many problems by 2028, China’s role in Asia won’t register.
In little ol’ Australia, we’ll watch the cricket and slumber through summer. Prime Minister Albanese’s interview on the final Insiders program for 2025 was typical, being purely domestic. A minister’s expensive airfares was a major issue, American war crimes and the national strategic statement Russia applauded didn’t rate a mention.
And with an iron grip on Labor Party members and an irrelevant opposition, Albanese/Marles/Wong will continue to treat the somnambulant Australian public with contempt, refusing to be open about our AUKUS fantasy,
“refusing to risk a public inquiry,
refusing to tell us what more the US is demanding of its South Pacific vassal.
Oh well, we can concentrate on the cricket, ignore our complicity in piracy and war crimes and just keep handing over the billion-dollar cheque
Michael Pascoe is an independent journalist and commentator with five decades of experience here and abroad in print, broadcast and online journalism. His book, The Summertime of Our Dreams, is published by Ultimo Press.
History Council of South Australia, 19 December 2025
Adelaide historian Dr Nicholas Herriot has been awarded the prestigious 2026 History Council of South Australia Fellowship for his project “Leave it in the Ground: South Australia, Uranium, and the Atomic Age”.
The project, which was the unanimous winner in a strong field of ten nominations, will investigate how South Australians mobilised against uranium mining and grappled with the promise and peril of the atomic age, focusing on the 1970s and early 1980s – a period of intense political controversy.
Dr Nicholas Herriot is an early career researcher specialising in Australian labour, environmental and social movement history. He teaches history at the University of Adelaide and serves on the executive of the Labour History Society (South Australia).
Supported by the State Library of South Australia, the $2000 History Council Fellowship is open to all Australians exploring South Australian history, and aims to foster research that deepens our understanding of the state’s past and its contributions to wider histories. The annual winner also receives 10 hours of library research support, library space and the use of a computer.
History Council of South Australia president Prof Matthew Fitzpatrick said the judges were impressed with Dr Herriot’s plan to explore the legacies of anti-nuclear campaigns in shaping contemporary debates about energy, sovereignty and environmental justice.
“The project is both topical and timely, resonating with current explorations into alternative energies and about the power of protest,” Prof Fitzpatrick said.
“By illuminating these aspects of our recent past, the research will help contextualise ongoing concerns about nuclear policy and environmental responsibility and highlight the library’s rich collections as vital resources for understanding the state’s unique identity.
Prof Fitzpatrick said the state library’s commitment to preserving and sharing the state’s documentary heritage contributed significantly to the success of the awards, and the advancement of historical research. He also thanked the Marsden Szwarcbord Foundation for its continued support.
State Library of South Australia director Megan Berghuis said she appreciated how Dr Herriot’s project would draw on the library’s extensive archival holdings, including oral histories, activist ephemera and rare periodicals.
Marsden Szwarcbord Foundation director Dr Susan Marsden AM said she was impressed by Dr Herriot’s intention to situate local activism within national and transnational networks.
Defence Connect, 19 December 2025, By: Stephen Kuper
H&B Defence and Curtin University have announced a new partnership to deliver Australia’s first nuclear fundamentals training course led by experts from the United Kingdom and the United States with direct experience in nuclear-powered submarines.
The two-day micro-credential course will begin in March 2026 and will be offered several times each year. It is designed to boost Western Australia’s technical readiness as the state prepares to support the sustainment of nuclear-powered submarines under the AUKUS partnership.
Aimed at engineers, technicians, project managers and defence industry support staff, the course will provide a foundational understanding of naval nuclear propulsion.
Topics will include the fundamentals of naval nuclear engineering, the history and development of US and UK naval nuclear programs, quality assurance and risk-management frameworks, and the safety, regulatory and compliance requirements associated with nuclear-powered submarine sustainment.
Participants will gain practical insight into the standards, culture and discipline required to operate safely and effectively in a nuclear-regulated environment, skills that are expected to be in growing demand as Australia develops its sovereign capability in this area.
Accredited as a Curtin University micro-credential, the course will be delivered by H&B Defence’s international team of certified nuclear professionals.
The instructors draw on the global experience of parent companies HII in the United States and Babcock in the United Kingdom, bringing more than 160 years of combined, real-world experience in nuclear engineering, operations, safety and regulatory compliance.
Benjamin Netanyahu is blaming the attack at Bondi Beach on Australia’s support for Palestinian statehood. He conflates Jewish safety with Zionism to garner support for Israel, but in doing so, he enlists all Jews as agents of Palestinian oppression.
On September 21, Australia officially recognized the State of Palestine. This recognition coincided with that of several other Western countries, including France, Canada, and the United Kingdom. This is, of course, a problem for an Israeli government that “flatly rejects the establishment of a Palestinian Arab state west of the Jordan River.”
So what better than a massacre of Jews on Hanukkah to undermine this effort?
At an Israeli government meeting following the Bondi Beach massacre, Netanyahu admonished the Australian government and its Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, for its supposed role. This rhetorical attack aimed not only to delegitimize support for Palestinian statehood but also to garner support for the continuing genocide in Gaza. It does not seem to matter that the shooters, a father and a son of Pakistani Muslim background, are reported to have been inspired by ISIS and not a Palestinian cause as such. Israel never misses an opportunity to incite against Palestinians.
“On August 17th, about four months ago, I sent Prime Minister Albanese of Australia a letter, in which I gave him warning, that the Australian government’s policy was promoting and encouraging antisemitism in Australia. I wrote: ‘Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire. It rewards Hamas terrorists. It emboldens those who menace Australian Jews, and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets. Antisemitism is a cancer. It spreads when leaders stay silent. It retreats when leaders act. I call upon you to replace weakness with action, appeasement with resolve’.
Instead, Prime Minister, you replaced weakness with weakness, and appeasement with more appeasement. Your government did nothing to stop the spread of antisemitism in Australia, you did nothing to curb the cancer cells that were growing inside your country, you took no action, you let the disease spread, and the result is the horrific attacks on Jews we saw today.”
So, following the Bondi Beach attack, Netanyahu is basically saying, “I told you so.”
The “appeasement” narrative is one that Netanyahu likes a lot, because it alludes to the appeasement policy of Britain towards Nazi Germany under PM Neville Chamberlain, who sought at the time to play soft with Hitler. The analogy turns Palestinians into Nazis, and those who seek to ‘appease’ them, weaklings and antisemites. For Netanyahu, antisemitism is a cancer, and who embodies it? Palestinians.
Netanyahu continued to apply pressure on Albanese, and in turn, any other leaders in the West who are considering supporting the Palestinians:
“We saw an action of a brave man, turns out a Muslim brave man [Netanyahu first claimed he was Jewish], that stopped one of these terrorists from killing innocent Jews. But it requires the action of your government, which you’re not taking, and you have to, because history will not forgive hesitation and weakness – it will honor action and strength. That’s what Israel expects of each of your governments in the West, and elsewhere. Because the disease spreads, and it will consume you as well. But we are worrying right now about our people, our safety, and we do not remain silent”.
And he then expanded his analogy to lump the Bondi Beach attack in with recent news from Syria, Gaza, and Lebanon:
“We fight those who try to annihilate us. They’re not only trying to annihilate us, they attack us because they attack the West. In Syria, we saw yesterday two American soldiers killed, and one American interpreter killed as well, killed because they represent our common culture. Now as a result of this, Secretary of War Pete Hegseth said the following. He said ‘let it be known, that if you target Americans anywhere in the world, you will spend the rest of your brief, anxious life, knowing the United States will hunt you, find you, and ruthlessly kill you’. We send our condolences to the people of America, and I want to say that our policy is exactly that policy. That’s why those who target Israelis, target our soldiers, try to kill them, or try to hurt them and wound them, as happened in Gaza yesterday – we take action. They will spend the rest of their brief, anxious lives knowing that Israel will hunt them, find them, and ruthlessly dispose of them. That is American policy, this is Israel’s policy. It’s our policy in Gaza, Lebanon, anywhere around us. We do not sit by and let these killers kill us.”
This is thus also a message to the U.S., we are one in our imperialist alliance. Netanyahu is signaling to Albanese, Australia, and anyone else who is thinking about aligning with the Palestinians in any form or shape, that they will be aligning with those who seek to annihilate Jews.
Netanyahu is playing an all-or-nothing game, and it’s forcing governments that seek to be liberal to choose a side – with Israel, or with the Palestinians, since Israel is so clearly bent on their destruction. Albanese was asked about Netanyahu’s accusations on ABC. Sarah Ferguson asked:
“Let me just talk to you about antisemitism. I want to bring up what Prime Minister Netanyahu said today. He singled you out personally, he said, for ‘pouring fuel on the antisemitism fire by recognising a Palestinian State’. Do you accept any link between that recognition and the massacre in Bondi?”
Albanese: “No, I don’t. And overwhelmingly, most of the world recognises a two-state solution as being the way forward in the Middle East.”
Albanese is clearly trying not to respond with fury to Netanyahu’s demeaning provocations, but Netanyahu is seeking to divide the world, are you with us or against us – and with us is against the Palestinians.
And it is exactly this rhetoric from Israel that arguably fuels antisemitism, or at least anti-Jewish animus.
This is because it seems impossible to protect Palestinians or even offer symbolic support for their national aspirations without being labeled a coward, an appeaser, or an antisemite seeking the destruction of the Jewish people. When these accusations set the terms, many feel that proving their worth against Israel’s claims is pointless. This dynamic also sustains hostility toward the Jewish community.
In 2015, after an attack in France on a Jewish supermarket, Netanyahu said to French Jews: “Israel is your home”. It caused considerable discontent among the Jewish community at the time, which is probably why he didn’t repeat it now. But he’s still posing as the strong leader of all Jews, whom the “weak” leaders should take example from, as it were. When such self-appointed ‘Jewish leaders’ conflate Judaism with Zionism and insist on unquestioning support for Palestinian destruction as proof of solidarity, people will often side with humanity—supporting those facing genocide, not those perpetrating it—and grow resentful of anyone demanding support for such actions.
We are already seeing the Zionist exploitation of the massacre to target Palestine solidarity in Australia, as well as internationally. We will likely also see a further crackdown on Palestinians from the river to the sea.
Following the massacre, mourners descended upon Bondi Beach to remember the victims. Jews waving Israeli flags were permitted, while anti-Zionist Jews wearing a kuffiyeh were distanced by the police. It was a message to all that the lessons drawn from this will likely be the Zionist ones.
Many are now once again listening to Netanyahu’s violent incitement, as if he weren’t wanted by the ICC for crimes against humanity. He has been granted moral authority once again, even if for a fleeting moment, as head of the self-proclaimed Jewish state. He is using it to berate the world about how to be on the right side of history, while actively commanding a genocide.
Gaza is being carved up. Palestinians are being written out.
As governments and billionaires design a “new Gaza,” most corporate media treat it as a technical project, not a colonial mandate that denies Palestinians the right to govern themselves. The basic fact of Palestinian self-determination is pushed to the margins or erased
How US military and corporate power reshaped Australian sovereignty, limited democratic control, and constrained independent decision-making.
Introduction: When Control Slips Quietly
Many Australians feel that major national decisions are no longer made entirely in Canberra. Defence policy, foreign affairs, intelligence cooperation, and even economic priorities increasingly align with United States interests, often without meaningful public debate.
At the centre of this shift is Australian sovereignty, the ability of citizens, through democratic institutions, to decide the nation’s direction. This erosion did not occur through invasion or emergency powers. It occurred gradually, through treaties, trade agreements, military integration, and political choices made over decades.
The Origins of US Military Influence in Australia
ANZUS and the Post-War Security Mindset
The 1951 ANZUS Treaty embedded Australia within a US-led security framework. While often described as a mutual defence pact, it imposes no binding obligation on the United States to defend Australia.
Over time, strategic alignment hardened into an assumption. Independent defence thinking was increasingly treated as unrealistic.
Pine Gap and Intelligence Dependency
Pine Gap is often described as a joint facility. In practice, it primarily supports US intelligence, surveillance, and targeting systems. Australia receives help from access, but not operational control. This dependency discourages dissent. Restricting operations risks exclusion from the intelligence systems Australia now relies upon.
US Marines now rotate continuously through Darwin. Australian bases support US operations across the Indo-Pacific. Command systems and logistics are increasingly integrated. These changes occurred with limited parliamentary scrutiny, shifting Australia from ally to forward operating platform.
AUKUS and Strategic Lock-In
AUKUS commits Australia to decades of nuclear submarine dependency and foreign technology control. Decisions on deployment and escalation often fall outside democratic oversight. This significantly weakens independent defence policy.
Foreign Influence in Australian Politics and the Economy
US corporations dominate defence procurement, digital platforms, energy services, and critical infrastructure. Privatisation transferred public assets into private, often foreign-owned, hands.
Trade agreements such as AUSFTA further limit regulatory freedom, allowing corporations to challenge laws designed to protect the public interest.Political Leadership, Capability, and Accountability
Successive governments approved deeper military and corporate integration with little public mandate. Many ministers responsible for defence and trade have limited experience outside party politics or corporate-aligned advisory roles. The revolving door between politics, lobbying, and defence contracting undermines independence and accountability.
Politics Ebook
Is This Treason or Democratic Breakdown?
Treason under Australian law requires intent to assist an enemy during wartime. That threshold is not met.
However, legality is different from legitimacy. What has occurred reflects dereliction of duty, erosion of democratic consent, and policy capture by foreign and corporate power.
Why Governments Now Fear Change
Challenging entrenched US dominance risks diplomatic pressure, intelligence withdrawal, capital flight, and media backlash. As a result, even modest reforms are framed as security threats. This is structural dependence, not conspiracy.
Australia’s Dollar Sovereignty and Defence Independence
Australia issues its own currency. It cannot run out of Australian dollars. Yet, governments behave as though public investment depends on foreign approval or balanced budgets.
This misunderstanding weakens Australia’s defence independence. A currency-sovereign nation can fund domestic industry, defence capability, infrastructure, and diplomacy using public money.
John Howard’s sudden concern about religious hatred would be comic if it were not obscene. This is the same leader who weaponised fear of Muslims during the Tampa crisis, who lied about desperate refugees throwing their children into the ocean, who used the Bali bombings to justify laws that disproportionately targeted Muslim communities.
On Sunday evening, December 15, fifteen people celebrating Hanukkah at Sydney’s Bondi Beach were murdered in an ISIS inspired terrorist attack. The victims ranged from a ten-year-old girl to an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor. Also slain, is Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who organised the Chabad community event.
By Wednesday morning, Naveed Akram, 24, had been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and terrorism. His father Sajid Akram, 50, who carried out the attack alongside him, was shot dead at the scene. Police later confirmed that Islamic State flags had been found in their vehicle.
It is worth being precise about what followed. Rabbi Schlanger was farewelled at a funeral held at the Chabad of Bondi synagogue, attended by NSW Premier Chris Minns and former prime minister Scott Morrison. The Prime Minister was not invited. Separately, a broader community and interfaith memorial was held in Bondi, to which Albanese was also not invited. He later attended a distinct interfaith service where he spoke alongside religious leaders. These distinctions matter, because the political narrative was constructed not around absence, but around the deliberate staging of presence.
Before the first funerals were held, senior Coalition figures began laying responsibility for the massacre at the feet of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. John Howard, pioneer of modern Australian dog whistle politics, emerged to lecture the nation on racial hatred. Scott Morrison appeared at memorial events, solemn and conspicuous. Opposition Leader Sussan Ley spoke darkly of government failure.
But it was former treasurer Josh Frydenberg who delivered the most incendiary line, declaring at a Bondi memorial gathering:
“It is time for him to accept personal responsibility for the death of 15 innocent people, including a 10-year-old child.”
This was not grief speaking. It was strategy.
The claim being advanced was simple and brutal. Had Albanese acted differently on antisemitism, had he implemented the full agenda of the government’s antisemitism envoy, these murders would not have occurred. Therefore, the blood was on his hands. Murdoch outlets amplified the message with enthusiasm.
This deserves to be called what it is: an outrageous lie wrapped in mourning clothes.
A timeline that refuses to cooperate
Sajid Akram arrived in Australia from India in 1998 on a student visa, during John Howard’s prime ministership. He later transitioned to a partner visa; then resident return visas. His son, Naveed, was born in Australia. Neither were on a terror watch list. Police confirm the pair travelled to the Philippines in November, raising serious questions about radicalisation pathways and intelligence blind spots.
The path that led to Bondi did not begin with Albanese. It began decades earlier, across a series of governments, and culminated in a catastrophic failure of detection and disruption by the very institutions designed to prevent mass casualty attacks.
That reality is inconvenient, because it demands scrutiny of intelligence agencies, policing systems, gun licensing regimes and online radicalisation ecosystems. So instead we are offered theatre.
Morrison attended Rabbi Schlanger’s funeral. Albanese was not invited. The message was clear enough for any political operative to decode. Judgment had been passed. Labor stood accused.
Albanese’s actual constraints
The PM’s response has been criticised as timid. In truth, it reflects the constitutional reality of the office.
Many of the measures being demanded by his critics are not merely controversial. Jillian Segal’s are constitutionally impossible without eviscerating principles of institutional independence and freedom of expression. Defunding universities for failing to meet a politicised definition of antisemitism, inserting an envoy into the oversight of public broadcasters, compelling ideological training of judges, are authoritarian measures dressed up as protection.
What Albanese has done is cherry-pick what is implementable while rejecting what is not. Segal attends education consultations but wields no defunding power. A Gonski led taskforce has been established to examine antisemitism across education sectors. Security funding for Jewish community sites has been extended. SBS will receive additional resources for social cohesion programming.
On the legal front, the government is pursuing hate crime reforms including enhanced penalties for threats and violence, national vilification consistency, and expanded capacity to list extremist organisations.
What none of these addresses is the central failure that made Bondi possible.
The questions that matter
How did two radicalised men amass multiple firearms legally? Why did a person previously investigated by ASIO retain access to long guns? How did the Akrams’ travel and online activity fail to trigger intervention? Why was a neo-Nazi rally approved outside Parliament weeks earlier, while resources for deradicalisation or advance protection of the Bondi Hanukah celebration remain threadbare?
These questions demand an inquiry. A royal commission into intelligence and security failures is not a political indulgence. It is the only serious response.
As Bernard Keane has argued, slogans about ideology do nothing to fix broken systems. Frydenberg’s line that “radical Islamist ideology pulled the trigger” is clever but empty. Ideology does not operate in a vacuum. It spreads through algorithmic amplification, grievance communities, and institutional neglect.
A deeper category error lies here. It matters. Increasingly, researchers and prevention agencies argue that violent extremism behaves less like a debate to be “won” and more like a social contagion that spreads through environments of grievance, isolation, algorithmic reinforcement and access to means.
In other words, it is not only a policing problem. It is a prevention problem, best tackled with the same logic public health uses for violence more broadly: early intervention, risk and protective factors, and harm reduction. The CDC’s public health approach to violence prevention offers the basic prevention framework, while work explicitly applying that lens to countering violent extremism is now mainstreamed in policy and research, from the U.S. National Institute of Justice to analyses of “complex contagion” dynamics in extremist spread.
But here? Crickets. And clearly, the opposition has little interest in examining these failures, because they implicate Coalition governments at both state and federal levels.
A serious response would look like this
A royal commission into intelligence and security failures, examining why ASIO’s investigation of Naveed Akram failed to prevent the attack, how licensing systems allowed a person under intelligence scrutiny to legally acquire multiple firearms, and why coordination failed between federal and state agencies.
An independent review of online radicalisation pathways, examining how ISIS and other extremist content bypasses platform moderation, how algorithms amplify radicalising material, and what regulatory frameworks could disrupt these pipelines without creating Orwellian surveillance.
A genuine public health approach to deradicalisation, learning from programs in Europe and Southeast Asia that intervene with at risk individuals before violence occurs, providing alternative narratives and exit pathways from extremism.
Honest engagement with the drivers of both antisemitism and Islamophobia in Australia, recognising that the same Coalition figures now demanding action on antisemitism spent years using anti-Muslim dog whistles for electoral advantage, teaching a generation of Australians that scapegoating religious minorities is politically acceptable.
But we are not getting any of this. Instead, we are getting partisan point scoring, with Howard blazing away.
A familiar political pattern
John Howard’s sudden concern about religious hatred would be comic if it were not obscene. This is the same leader who weaponised fear of Muslims during the Tampa crisis, who lied about desperate refugees throwing their children into the ocean, who used the Bali bombings to justify laws that disproportionately targeted Muslim communities.
Those instincts did not vanish. They normalised the idea that religious minorities could be treated as electoral threats. They taught Australians that scapegoating worked.
The Akrams did not emerge from nowhere. They were radicalised in a country where anti-Muslim rhetoric has been rendered politically acceptable over decades. That cultural groundwork is precisely what ISIS propaganda exploits.
For Howard to now pose as an elder statesman while ignoring his own role in cultivating grievance requires an astonishing capacity for self-delusion.
Bondi should have triggered a national reckoning about institutional failure. Instead, it has been repurposed as a weapon.
But that is only half the story.
Because alongside the blame game sits a second, more dangerous manoeuvre. The attempt to redefine antisemitism itself in ways that risk making Jewish Australians less safe, not more.
That is the argument you are not supposed to have.
Australians everywhere should be made acutely aware that the Australian Israel lobby is now explicitly advocating a ban on criticism of the state of Israel.
Not just hate speech against Jews. Criticism of a foreign state. They’re coming right out and saying it.
During a recent public video conference with the American Jewish Committee on the topic of the Bondi Beach shooting, the Executive Manager of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) explicitly says he wants pro-Palestine protests to be banned by the Australian government, and that addressing the problem of antisemitic hate speech in Australia necessarily means stopping opposition to Israel’s actions.
About 40 minutes into the American Jewish Committee’s YouTube video of the conference, AIJAC Executive Manager Joel Burnie demands that the Australian government take much stronger action to regulate freedom of expression regarding Israel and Zionism in Australia, saying the following:
“They need to act swiftly. They need to go to their own arms and their own institutions: no longer can you refuse service to a Zionist. We are going to prosecute people that spew hate speech against your people, and we’re not going to tip toe around the fact that the central problem here is Israel. I for one as Jewish leader will no long talk about antisemitism in isolation from Israel, because it’s the rhetoric and language on Israel that motivates the people to come and kill us. Those two terrorists were motivated by what was going on in Israel, and that’s what motivated them to come and kill us. So if they had Israel on their minds why are we acting as though it has nothing to do with the vitriolic binary nature of the pro-Palestinian advocacy movement?”
Burnie goes on to say that he wants a complete government ban on protests against Israel’s abuses throughout the nation:
“So overnight what we want immediately if you ask any Jew, what do you want, what do you want? No more protests! No more protests! No more no-go zones for Jews. I can’t, for two years, cannot take my kids to downtown Melbourne for two years on a Sunday, because of the pro-Palestinian marches, because of the violent nature of them. No more! Because that is an acceptance of the connection between the two. And until the prime minister is willing to do that, this is gonna happen again.”
Burnie is lying here, for the record. Anyone who has gone to the pro-Palestine demonstrations in Melbourne as I have will tell you that the protests are not even slightly violent in nature, and that there are Jews among the demonstrators who actively make their presence known. Those demonstrations have never been “no-go zones for Jews”; Joel Burnie doesn’t want to take his kids to downtown Melbourne on a Sunday because he doesn’t want to expose them to ideas and information which reveal the depravity of his Israel-supporting worldview.
Australians would probably benefit from watching the entire hour-long video of the conference, whose contents I first saw spotlighted on Twitter by Information Liberation’s Chris Menahan.
Some other highlights:
At 4:20 Burnie says that part of his role at AIJAC is “to take non-Jewish politicians and journalists and diplomats and other Australian officials to Israel.”
At 14:00 Nick Aronson, who is Chief of Staff to Australia’s so-called “antisemitism envoy” Jillian Segal, regurgitates the bogus propaganda line we’ve been hearing nonstop from Israel apologists throughout the western political/media class, “the words globalise the intifada actually mean globalise the intifada; it means kill Jews wherever they are”. Pro-Israel spinmeisters have been spouting this line with creepy uniformity ever since the Bondi shooting in order to justify government crackdowns on freedom of speech and assembly to protect Israeli information interests.
At 15:00 Burnie says “the gloves are off now” with regard to stomping out free speech in Australia, saying Jews need stop saying “not all pro-Palestinian supporters are antisemitic”, saying “The pro-Palestinian movement, or the things within the pro-Palestinian movement that we all are exposed to in the public, is too binary: you’re pro-Palestinian so you need to be viciously anti-Israel.”
At 16:20 Burnie claims the Bondi shooting “happened because of the protest movements on the streets”, citing no evidence.
At 17:30 Burnie again makes his “no more protests” demand, saying “If I could ask for one thing of the government today: no more protests. If they cannot utilise language that is not inciting violence, that does not marginalise and dehumanise Jews, they have no right to be on the streets.”
At 21:10 Burnie complains that there haven’t been any prosecutions and arrests for antisemitic speech.
At 33:30 Burnie singles out Australian Muslims, saying “there needs to be more monitoring and surveillance of Islamic hate preachers” and an auditing of their education syllabus because of an “antisemitism problem amongst the Australian Muslim community.”
At 36:25 Burnie says Jillian Segal’s notorious speech-suppressing plan for fighting antisemitism in Australia “wasn’t about quashing debate on Israel, it just happens to be that language on Israel invading all of our social spaces in Australia have made this country a very unsafe space and place for Jews.”
At 46:00 Aronson says “there’s absolutely no doubt that people need to go to jail” for antisemitic hate speech in Australia, but says that won’t be enough to fix the problem because “we can always arrest more people, make no mistake, but you can never arrest enough, to be honest.”
At 54:00 Aronson speaks of the need for regulating online speech, complaining that “a number of the online platforms pride themselves on what they call free speech — obviously we would disagree; we would call it hate speech.” At 56:00 he says “we need to continue to put pressure on these platforms to understand the role they have to play in social cohesion, and how far short they are falling of community standards.”
This comes as the Australian government announces plans to ramp up its war on free speech in the wake of the Bondi Beach attack. We can be sure to see more authoritarian measures rolled out in the weeks to come as Israel’s supporters seize on this opportunity to advance the information interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Defence policy should be about defending Australia, and nothing else
John Quiggin’s Blogstack, 19 Dec 25
Discussions of defence policy in Australia typically start from two underlying presumptions. The first is that the protection of our freedom and sovereignty from foreign conquest is too fundamental to be subject to the kind of cost- benefit analysis that is, or ought to be, normally applied to public expenditure. The second is that defence policy can be used to promote a wide variety of goals, such as projecting power and influence through peacekeeping and disaster relief.
Unfortunately, these presumptions are mutually inconsistent, and lead to incoherent policy responses. This is most evident in the case of AUKUS, the largest single defence purchase in Australian history, and a major change in policy with the shift to nuclear-powered submarines. There has been no explanation of the strategic rationale for AUKUS, let alone any attempt to weigh costs and benefits. Yet there has been extensive discussion of the potential for increased employment of skilled trades workers. Given the expenditure involved and the relatively modest numbers of workers required, this ought to be a third-order consideration, yet it appears to have had a significant influence on the design of the program.
As the case of AUKUS suggests, the interaction between defence and industry policy is a tangled one. In particular, the strong political demand from South Australia for manufacturing industries to replace motor vehicle building has weighed heavily on policy choices, effectively ruling out “off-the-shelf” purchases of submarines, and placing a high premium on including some Australian contribution to production of such high-cost items.
A Future Made in Australia ?
Given that the stated aim of policy is “A Future Made in Australia” , a more rational policy approach would provide direct subsidies to manufacturing of all kinds, while leaving open the option of off-the-shelf purchases of defence equipment. Paying higher costs to encourage a domestic armaments industry entails the opportunity cost of forgoing assistance that might be provide to other industries with greater social and economic benefits.
There is a defence rationale for maintaining a capacity to produce some armaments. In the event of a long conventional war, Australia might be unable to import crucial supplies. Hence, it would make sense to seek some degree of self- reliance in this respect.
However, the goals of industry policy and defence self- reliance are often poorly aligned. Large-scale procurement projects such as AUKUS and the F-35 program often involve some element of local production and assembly, but the resulting capacity would not necessarily be of value in the event of a conflict in which Australia was isolated from allied support
……………………………. the claimed industrial benefits of AUKUS involve integration into United Kingdom and United States supply chains. This is consistent with an industry policy goal of increasing exports of elaborately transformed manufactures. But it is directly contrary to the defence goal of enhancing our independent capacity to protect ourselves in an emergency. In the event of a conflict that cut off international supply chains, we would be unable to secure parts and repair services except for the subset that happened to be allocated to Australia.In many cases, the appropriate response to the possibility of supply disruptions will be a combination of stockpiles and (for items with civilian use, such as fuel) rationing, rather than the maintenance of high-cost production capacity.
The Grey Zone
Lying between policies designed for national defence and those aimed at delivering non-defence benefits is the aptly named “grey zone” . As the name implies, this term is poorly defined and covers a wide range of hostile actions by other nation states and non-state actors, ranging from aggressive disputes over maritime boundaries to cyber-attacks and election disinformation. Crucially, the term is used almost entirely in the context of defence policy, and to support the implication that a military response of some kind is appropriate.
In general, however, the capabilities required to address grey zone problems will bear little relationship to those required to defend Australia against invasion. For example, the resolution of maritime disputes might involve the deployment of patrol boats and coast guard vessels. But, despite a long history of such disputes, dating back to the “Cod Wars” between the UK and Iceland, serious armed conflict remains vanishingly rare. Moreover, the possession of more powerful naval forces is of little value, as the failure of the Royal Navy in three successive “wars” over fishing rights indicates.
Who’d have thought, in this time of crisis, lies and propaganda, that it might be the Jerusalem Post that showed us an ethical direction?
And, on another matter of ethics – the Jerusalem Post, again.
I’m pretty used to the pro-Zionist propaganda that spills out from the Israeli media, the American media, and the Australian media.
I don’t know if it’s Hannukah, Christmas, or what, but in the usual cacophony of news and opinion, – that normally unfashionable subject of ethics is now standing out.
The Jerusalem Post spelt out its horror at the new, and murderous symbolism, of the lapel image now worn by ultranationalist Israeli politicians. Closely resembling the previous symbol, which called for the return of the Israeli hostages, their new symbol calls for continued killing of Palestinians, as the lapel image morphs from a ribbon into a noose.
A golden noose around Israel’s soul – says the paper – “The golden noose goes far beyond poor taste. It represents a theology of death, a reverence for vengeance that distorts the face of Judaism and deals a severe blow to Israeli society.”
“Jews around the world would be hard-pressed to defend and embrace the Jewish state.“
And indeed, this noose-wearing thing might backfire – as Jews in Israel and beyond reflect on the ethics of the Netanyahu government’s war on Palestinians.
Almost simultaneously, came the news of the massacre of Jews at Bondi Beach. The mainstream corporate news outlets have, predictably, latched on to this, to engender more vengefulness and hatred, and to blame Australia’s Prime Minister for his support of Palestinian state rights.
There is much coverage and genuine concern for the victims of this cruel outrage and their families. In amongst this, some sentimental coverage of the brave man who tackled an armed killer. As the ABC pointed out, media coverage treated this man as an oddity – as being a Muslim, one would not expect such decency. – a media attitude that is subtly Islamophobic.
” Ahmed al-Ahmed a 43-year-old Sydney fruit shop owner and father of two, moved toward the attacker, wrapped him from behind, wrestled away the long gun, and forced the shooter to retreat. He was shot and hospitalized, but his split-second decision is widely credited with preventing even greater carnage.”
And commented – “There is something profoundly Hanukkah about that moment.”
The Post goes on to reflect on those non-Jews of history, who risked everything to save Jews, – Raoul Wallenberg. Oskar Schindler. Chiune Sugihara and more
“These stories are not only about the Holocaust, but they are also about moral clarity under pressure, the choice to see a fellow human being and refuse to look away.”
This man’s courage and generosity of spirit has impressed people world-wide, and his actions have been praised in the media, cutting through the general tone of anger and hatred
The author, ZVIKA KLEIN, reminds that Hannukah means “a demand that human beings choose decency over cruelty“
Which is pretty much what Christmas is supposed to mean, too.
While the merchants of hate, revenge, and political opportunism hold sway in the corporate media, voices for compassion and decency are being heard too. These are hopes to cling to for the coming year, and bring some positive meaning to Hannukah and Christmas,
they’re using a tragic mass shooting as a political cudgel against people who believe Palestinians are human beings. This is just one more cynical manipulation aimed at protecting Israel from criticism so that it can inflict more violence and suffering upon the world.
Looks like some kind of memo went out or something, because pro-Israel outlets and individuals are all loudly amplifying one specific talking point about the Bondi Beach shooting.
“I have a simple question for leftists after the antisemitic shooting in Australia. What do you think ‘globalize the intifada’ means?” ~ US Senator Ted Cruz
“That attack in Sydney is exactly what it means to ‘globalize intifada.’ We saw the actual application of the globalization of intifada in Sydney.” ~ New York City Mayor Eric Adams
“These are the results of the anti-Semitic rampage in the streets of Australia over the past two years, with the anti-Semitic and inciting calls of ‘Globalise the Intifada’ that were realized today.” ~ Gideon Sa’ar, Foreign Minister of Israel
“When you refuse to condemn and only ‘discourage’ use of the term ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ you help facilitate (not cause) the thinking that leads to Bondi Beach.” ~ Former US antisemitism envoy Deborah Lipstadt (addressing New York City Mayor Elect Zohran Mamdani)
“What on earth do you think globalise the intifada means? And can’t people see the link between that kind of rhetoric and attacks on Jewish people as Jewish people? Because that’s what really struck at the heart of Jewish people in our country today — an attack on Jewish people organising around Hannukah, coming together as Jewish people.” ~ UK Health Secretary Wes Streeting
“Why is it still allowed? What is the meaning of globalise the intifada? I’ll tell you the meaning… it’s what happened on Bondi Beach yesterday.” ~ Ephraim Mirvis, Chief Rabbi of the United Kingdom
“Calls to ‘globalise the intifada’ and chants of ‘from the river to the sea’ are not abstract or rhetorical slogans. They are explicit calls for violence, and they carry deadly consequences. What we are witnessing is the inevitable outcome of sustained radicalisation that has been allowed to fester under the guise of protest.” ~ Israeli embassy in the UK
“This is what happens when you ‘globalize the intifada.’” ~ Newsweek editors
“This was not an isolated act of violence — it was the culmination of ‘globalise the intifada’ rhetoric that has been building around the world since October 7.” ~ Yoni Bashan, The Times
“For those who’ve been marching these past few years demanding to ‘globalise the intifada’ this is a barbarous anti-Semitic consequence of their pro-Islamist stupidity.” ~ Former BBC anchor Andrew Neil
“When people call to ‘globalise the intifada’, this is what they are calling for: dead Jews, terrorism and families shattered forever.” ~ Campaign Against Antisemitism spokesperson
“Taking a stand against antisemitism after Bondi Beach should begin with an unequivocal recognition that ‘intifada’ rhetoric is hate speech.” ~ The Bulwark’s Cathy Young
“It would be great if those who have been shouting ‘Global Intifada’ would revisit that phrase right now. It is not a ‘harmless left wing slogan.’ It is a call to blame — and kill — Jews who have nothing, absolutely nothing to do with the actions of the Israeli government.” ~ Spiritual guru and former US presidential candidate Marianne Williamson
Of course, these outlets and individuals do not actually care about the phrase “globalize the intifada”. If pro-Palestine activists had never chanted that slogan, pro-Israel spinmeisters would be focusing on a different line today. They are not trying to stop chants which they perceive as dangerous, they are trying to stomp out criticism of Israel’s genocidal atrocities.
As The Intercept’s Natasha Lennard wrote regarding the aforementioned Bret Stephens piece, “It’s all done in the name of fighting antisemitism by conflating the worst kinds of violent anti-Jewish bigotry, like what we saw in Bondi Beach, with any criticisms of Israel and its actions. To so much as say Palestinians ought to have basic human rights, in this view, becomes a deadly attack on Jewish safety.”
The term “intifada” means to “shake off” and “rise up”, and as Middle East Eye’s Craig Birckhead-Morton and Yasmin Zainab Bergemann explained last year, intifadas have historically included nonviolent resistance. Saying “globalize the intifada” isn’t calling for people to massacre Jewish civilians around the world, it’s advocating resistance to the power structure which incinerated Gaza and continues to inflict abuse upon Palestinians and any other population which doesn’t bow to the interests of the empire.
And the people scaremongering about this phrase know this. They’re fully aware that they’re using a tragic mass shooting as a political cudgel against people who believe Palestinians are human beings. This is just one more cynical manipulation aimed at protecting Israel from criticism so that it can inflict more violence and suffering upon the world.
As Em Hilton wrote for the Israeli outlet +972, “It is obscene how quickly the right has seized on this horror to advance an Islamophobic, anti-Palestinian agenda. And it is disgusting to see Israel’s politicians almost gleeful at the opportunity to distract from their genocidal onslaught in Gaza by using our pain and grief as a political weapon.”
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rarely passes an opportunity to comment upon the way Jews in other countries are treated. While the manic hatred directed against Jews remains one of history’s grotesque legacies, opportunism in the Netanyahu government is a ready instinct. With a customary sense of perversion, Netanyahu has managed to mangle Israeli policy, his own political destiny and the interests of Jews in a terrible, terrifying mix. The broad stroke charge of antisemitism is the front name of this venture, and it conveniently presents itself whenever Israeli policy requires an alibi when pursuing particularly unsavoury policies: massacre, starvation and dispossession of Gazans; the continued destruction and intended eradication of a functional Palestinian entity; efforts to prevent criticism of its settler policies in other countries.The slaughter of 15 people enjoying the festivities of Hanukkah on Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach by the father-son duo of Sajid and Naveed Akram, presented a political opportunity. Having already accused Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of being a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews” earlier in the year, Netanyahu readied another verbal lashing. In prickly remarks made at a government meeting in Dimona, the Israeli PM accused his Australian counterpart of being a leader who had “replaced weakness and appeasement with more appeasement.” His “call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.” It had rewarded “Hamas terrorists” and emboldened “those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets.”
Other Israeli politicians also decided that an unmeasured though monstrous antisemitism stalked the island continent, spawning the Bondi killings. “We felt and experienced the intense antisemitism directed against the Jewish community in Australia,” claimed Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer. Diaspora Affairs Minister Amichai Chikli thought it appropriate to send “a delegation of experts in emergency response” to Australia, promising to “stand with the Jewish community in this difficult time and to ensure that we, as the State of Israel, are giving them everything within our ability.”
Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar had a list of lecturing points for his Australian counterpart, Penny Wong. There had to be, he stated with a teacherly certitude, “a real change in the public atmosphere.” This required culling phrases and expressions that had been expressed on behalf of the Palestinian cause in public debate and protest. “Call such as ‘Globalize the Intifada,’ ‘From the River to the Sea Palestine Will be Free,’ and ‘Death to the IDF’ are not legitimate, are not part of the freedom of speech, inevitably lead to what we witnessed today.”
In Australia, the acceptance of such positions, and the watering down of the Palestinian cause, was rapidly normalised. A procession line of commentators proceeded to state begrudgingly that Israeli government policy could be criticised only to demonstrate how slim such latitude was. This firm, excruciating delineation was offered by Jeremy Leibler of the Zionist Federation of Australia: “Australians can criticise Israeli government policy, Israelis do it loudly and fiercely themselves. But delegitimising Israel’s right to exist, or slipping into a moral equivalence between a liberal democracy defending its citizens and a terrorist organisation that targets civilians, is something else entirely.”
Leibler’s semantic technique is important here, forcibly linking those who claim Israel has no right to exist to critics of Israel’s policy of self-defence after October 7, 2023 that has left 68,000 Palestinians dead, Gaza pulverised and an enclave on life support. At the instigation of South Africa, it is a policy that is being scrutinised by the International Court of Justice as being potentially genocidal. It is a policy that has been deemed genocidal by the UN Independent International Commission of Inquiry on the Occupied Palestinian Territory along with a clutch of notable human rights organisations, including the Israeli outfit B’Tselem. Arrest warrants have also been issued by the International Criminal Court for Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant, citing alleged war crimes and crimes against humanity.
Establishment voices from a long moribund press class are also of the view that not enough has been done by the Albanese government to combat a supposedly mad blight of antisemitism, seemingly unique from the other jostling hatreds. (Islamophobia, anyone?) The massacre, according to the unevidenced observation of veteran journalist Michelle Grattan, was “the horrific culmination of the antisemitism epidemic that has spread like wildfire in Australia.”
She noted, with grave disapproval, the failure to “formally” respond to the combative strategy proposed by the antisemitism envoy Jillian Segal, one that openly accepts the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s stifling definition of antisemitism. Any official embrace of that definition – a point made by that definition’s originator, Kenneth Stern – would be a fashioned spear against free speech, censoring genuine criticism of Israeli policies. The Jerusalem Declaration, by way of contrast, notes that hostility to the Israeli state “could be an expression of an antisemitic animus, or it could be a reaction to a human rights violation, or it could be the emotion that a Palestinian feels on account of their experience at the hands of the state.”
Like most journalists wedded to the holy writ press brief and arid political interview, Grattan shows no sign of having been to a single protest condemning the murderous death toll in Gaza, or any gathering advancing the validity of Palestinian self-determination. Woolly-headed, she freely speculates. “Most of us did not recognise this fact, but this anti-Jewish sentiment must have been embedded in sections of the Australian community – the Hamas attack on Israel in October 2023 was the spark that lit the conflagration.” Her travesty of an effort to understand the attacks in Bondi becomes evident in cod assessments of various protest marches and demonstrations across Australian university campuses. Without even a suggestion of evidence, she claims that “university encampments” proved “intimidating for Jewish students and staff.” Those Jewish students and staff more than willing to engage in those encampments mysteriously warrant no mention. Efforts on the part of cloddish university managers to harass, suspend and censor students expressing pro-Palestinian causes don’t seem to interest Grattan either.
With laziness, she snacks on the propagandistic samples provided by Israel’s publicity relations buffet, referring to unspecified “others” who believed that the Albanese government’s recognition of a Palestinian state stoked local antisemitism. Foreign Minister Wong’s failure to “visit the sites of the 2023 atrocities when she went to Israel early last year was much criticised in the Jewish community.”
Thus far, Israeli propagandists have shamelessly badgered their opponents down under into accepting a streaky narrative that would fail to survive judicial, let alone historical scrutiny.The agenda is clear enough: the inoculation of Israel against international opprobrium. Much will now depend on Albanese’s fortitude, if he, and his ministers, can find it.
My roommate in rabbinical school Rabbi Yaakov Levitan signed his last Facebook message to me with the words “peace and love brother”. He lived that way as a Jewish community leader in Sydney. Terrorists on Bondi Beach murdered him as he was spreading light at a Chanukah gathering. In the chaos, Australian civilian Ahmed Al Ahmed ran toward one of the gunmen, tackled him and wrestled away his weapon, saving lives. He took two bullets and is in critical but stable condition. He is a hero.
But the media’s fixation on his Syrian and Muslim identity reveals an implicit bias that this kind of heroism — especially the kind that saves Jewish lives — is not to be expected from a Muslim.
Major outlets led with Ahmed’s religion before describing his courage. Headlines repeatedly framed him as a “Muslim man” who stopped a shooter, as if his faith explained the story rather than his actions. Some reports highlighted his Syrian background in the opening lines, treating that identity as the headline and his bravery as a footnote.
Such framing matters. The Islamophobia implicit here does not lie in the praise. It lies in the assumption. The coverage assumes that a Muslim risking his life to save Jews defies expectation. It treats decency as anomalous when it comes from a Muslim man. When goodness from Muslims becomes newsworthy because of who they are, not what they do, the media confesses how low its baseline expectations have fallen.
The reaction went further. Commentators and viral posts tried to erase Ahmed’s identity altogether. Some insisted he could not be Muslim. Others claimed he must be Christian. Several outlets reported on this reaction, amplifying the idea that Muslim heroism required explanation or denial. Still others highlighted online attacks branding Ahmed a “traitor” for saving Jews, again focussing on his faith as a problem rather than his courage as the point.
These narratives do real damage. They reinforce the idea that Muslim morality and Jewish safety stand in tension. They are wrong.
Recent history proves it. On 7 October 2023, Hamas carried out the deadliest massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Amid the carnage, Arab and Bedouin Muslims risked their lives to save Jewish civilians under fire. Four Bedouin men from Rahat pulled 30 to 40 Jews out of danger near Kibbutz Be’eri while bullets flew. They asked no questions. They acted.
Surveys after the attack showed that large majorities of Arab Israelis, Muslim and Druze rejected the attacks and backed rescue and volunteer efforts. Much of the media coverage barely mentioned those findings because they disrupted the simple story line.
At the same time, honesty requires clarity. Antisemitism has surged worldwide, and Muslim leadership too often fails to condemn it clearly, publicly and consistently. Silence creates moral fog. When Jews hear hesitation instead of unequivocal rejection of Jew-hatred, trust is eroded and extremists gain ground. This is not a uniquely Muslim failure. Antisemitism infects many ideologies, religions, and political movements. Everyone must do more.
Ahmed did not issue a statement. He did not hedge. He acted. He showed what moral clarity looks like in real time. He affirmed, without words, that Jewish lives matter. He should not be the exception. He should be the rule.
Ahmed’s bravery does not erase antisemitism. It does not remove armed guards from synagogues. It does not bring my friend Yaakov back. But it does set a standard. If we want a world where such courage becomes ordinary, every community must raise its expectations. Muslim leaders must condemn antisemitism without caveat. Jewish communities must resist judging entire populations by their worst voices. And the media must stop treating Muslim decency as an anomaly and start treating it as normal.
Ahmed Al Ahmed did what any decent human being should hope to do. The tragedy is that his courage felt unexpected. It should not have. May Ahmed’s courage stand as the rule, not the exception.
Eli Federman has written for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times, USA Today, Reuters and other media outlets on society, religion and media bias.
Does anyone remember the 15 Palestinians who died on March 16, 2025?
Does that day stand out in anyone’s memory as particularly significant in terms of mass murder?
No?
Same here.
I honestly can’t remember it at all. This would have been during the tail end of the first fake “ceasefire”, a couple of days before Trump signed off on Israel resuming its large-scale bombing operations in Gaza, so this wasn’t one of those days with huge massacres and staggering death tolls. It doesn’t exactly stand out in the memory.
I have no idea who those people were. I don’t know their names. I never saw their pictures flashing across my news feed. I never saw any western officials denouncing their deaths, or media institutions giving wall-to-wall coverage to the news of their killing. So I don’t remember them.
“15 civilians were killed in the massacre targeting Sydney’s Jewish community. A day in which Israel massacres 15 Palestinian civilians in Gaza would be at the low end of the average in 2+ years of genocide.
“Israel’s atrocities and the impunity they receive are undoubtedly the number one driver of anti-Semitism worldwide. And to show how little Israel and its apologists care about anti-Semitism, many are exploiting the Sydney massacre to justify Israel’s rejection of a Palestinian state; baselessly blame Iran; and demand more censorship of anti-genocide protests.”
Indeed, the worst people on earth are using the Bondi Beach shooting to argue for crackdowns on free speech and freedom of assembly to silence Israel’s critics online and on the streets, in Australia and throughout the western world. And when 15 Palestinians were killed by Israel on March 16, the west barely noticed.
I don’t remember the 15 Palestinians who died during that 24-hour period in mid-March, but I will always remember the Bondi Beach shooting. Someone could mention it to me thirty years from now and I’ll know exactly what they’re talking about. My society made an infinitely bigger deal about the deaths of 15 westerners in Sydney, Australia than the deaths of 15 Palestinians in Gaza, so it will always stick in my memory.
Hell, I can’t blame it all on society; if I’m honest I made a much bigger deal about it myself. I’ve felt sick thinking about the shooting ever since it happened, partly because I know it’s going to be used to roll out authoritarian measures and stomp out free speech in my country, but also partly because I’ve felt so bad for those who died and their loved ones. Even after spending two years denouncing the way western society normalizes the murder of Arabs and places more importance on western lives than Palestinian lives, I’m still basically doing the same thing myself. I’m a damn hypocrite.
I wasn’t born this way. This was learned behavior. If I had my slate cleaned and could see the world through fresh eyes it would never occur to me that I and my society would ever see 15 people being murdered in Australia as more significant than 15 people being murdered in Palestine. I would expect them to be viewed as exactly as terrible.
And they should be. Palestinians don’t love their families any less than Australians do. Australian lives aren’t any more significant or valuable than Palestinian lives. There is no valid reason for the world to have focused any less on the 15 people who were killed in Gaza on March 16 than on the 15 people who were murdered on Bondi Beach. But it did.
Sunday was an awful, dark day. Hundreds of lives have been directly devastated by this tragedy, thousands more indirectly, and in some ways the nation as a whole has been changed. The trauma will reverberate in the victim’s families for generations. The sorrow is palpable and ubiquitous. It’s everywhere; in the streets, at the supermarket. There is catastrophe in the air, and people around the world are feeling it.
And this is appropriate. This is what 15 deaths ought to feel like. This is what it feels like when you see mass murder inflicted upon a population whose murder hasn’t become normalized for you.
That’s all I’ve got to offer right now. Just the humble suggestion that every massacre of Palestinians should shake the earth just as much as the Bondi massacre has. Every death toll out of Gaza should hit us just as hard as the death toll out of Sydney did. Feel how hard this hits, and then translate it to the people of Gaza. This is happening there every single day.
In trying to get people to care about warmongering and imperialism what we’re really trying to do is get people to widen their circle of compassion to the furthest extent possible. To extend their care for the people around them to include caring about violence and abuse against people even on the other side of the world, who might not look and speak and live as they do. Maybe even extending it so far as caring about the non-human organisms who share our planet with us.
As Einstein wrote in a condolence letter toward the end of his life,
“A human being is a part of the whole, called by us ‘Universe,’ a part limited in time and space. He experiences himself, his thoughts and feelings as something separated from the rest — a kind of optical delusion of his consciousness. This delusion is a kind of prison for us, restricting us to our personal desires and to affection for a few persons nearest to us. Our task must be to free ourselves from this prison by widening our circle of compassion to embrace all living creatures and the whole nature in its beauty. Nobody is able to achieve this completely, but the striving for such achievement is in itself a part of the liberation and a foundation for inner security.”
Humanity won’t survive into the distant future unless we grow into a conscious species, and part of that growth will necessarily include widening our circles of compassion to include our fellow beings around the world. If we can’t do that, we’re not going to make it. We’re too destructive. We hurt each other and our environment too much. We destroy everything around us trying to shore up wealth and resources for ourselves, and it simply is not sustainable. It’ll get us all killed eventually.
We’ve got to become better. We’ve got to become more caring. More emotionally intelligent. Less susceptible to the manipulations of propaganda. A society driven by truth and compassion rather than lies and the pursuit of profit.
That’s the only way we’re making it out of this awkward adolescent transition stage with these large, capable brains still wound up in vestigial evolutionary fear-based conditioning. That’s the only way we achieve our true potential and build a healthy world together.
After the devastating massacre at Bondi Beach on Sunday, Australia’s PM and leaders promised to tighten gun laws to help make sure it never happens again. As an American reading this, and hearing more than just “thoughts and prayers,” I sat at my desk and felt deeply sad. Our country is so dysfunctional that we cannot handle even the basics of governing, let alone face the leading cause of death for American children: firearms.
What stood out to me was how quickly Australia’s leaders responded and how they seemed to agree that the government should act after something so terrible. In the United States, mass shootings are often followed by sadness but no action. It can feel like we accept these deaths as normal instead of trying to prevent them. Seeing another country treat gun violence as a problem they can fix makes our inaction even harder to understand.
A massacre demands clarity, not opportunism. Honouring the dead means resisting the rush to weaponise grief and insisting on evidence before politics raises its voice.
Australia’s Bondi Beach massacre demands grief, respect, fairness and empathy before anything else. As of the afternoon of 15 December, fifteen people are dead, murdered while gathered to mark Hanukkah. Families are shattered. A community has been targeted.
Politics Ebook
Nothing written in these first days should forget that, or rush past it.
But grief does not require silence, and it does not require surrendering the dead to political theatre. Within hours of the attack, familiar scripts were already being dusted off. Foreign leaders, local ideologues and media provocateurs moved quickly to bend fresh blood into proof of arguments they had long prepared. That reflex is not analysis. It is cheap, cynical, opportunism.
What we know, and what we do not
Police have confirmed that two men, a father and son, carried out the attack and were confronted by NSW Police within minutes. The elder was killed at the scene. The younger remains critically injured and under guard. Authorities are examining motive, movements, digital traces and licensing history. At the time of writing, no public finding has established foreign direction, state sponsorship or organisational command. That work belongs to investigators, not to commentators with deadlines.
What is clear is that the victims were Jewish Australians gathered for a religious celebration, and that antisemitism must be named plainly where it exists. There is no moral ambiguity about that.
Jews were targeted because they were Jews.
That fact alone is grave enough without being conscripted into other causes.
The moment that breaks the script
Police have confirmed that two men, a father and son, carried out the attack and were confronted by NSW Police within minutes. The elder was killed at the scene. The younger remains critically injured and under guard. Authorities are examining motive, movements, digital traces and licensing history. At the time of writing, no public finding has established foreign direction, state sponsorship or organisational command. That work belongs to investigators, not to commentators with deadlines.
What is clear is that the victims were Jewish Australians gathered for a religious celebration, and that antisemitism must be named plainly where it exists. There is no moral ambiguity about that.
Jews were targeted because they were Jews.
That fact alone is grave enough without being conscripted into other causes.
The moment that breaks the script
Against the horror stands a moment that should have arrested the rush to caricature. Ahmed al Ahmed, a Muslim Australian, fruiterer, father of two, ran toward danger. Video shows him confronting a gunman, disarming him, placing the weapon aside, raising a bloodied hand. He was shot and seriously injured. He survived. Others did not die because he intervened.
This matters. Not as sentiment, but as evidence. The attack was antisemitic.
The act that saved lives was Muslim.
Anyone who cannot hold both truths at once is not interested in understanding what happened, only in exploiting it.
The politics that arrived too quickly
Even before victims were formally identified, the blame industry went to work. Overseas figures folded Bondi into broader regional conflicts, pressing it into service as proof of distant enemies and permanent wars. Locally, others rushed to claim that Australia’s foreign policy settings, recognition debates or protest movements had “sent signals” and invited murder.
This does not withstand scrutiny. Over 140 UN member states recognise Palestinian statehood in some form, many for decades, without suffering massacres on their beaches. The attackers did not target Parliament, ministers or symbols of state. They targeted Jewish civilians at prayer.
Turning that into an argument for diplomatic reversal or communal suspicion is not security analysis. It is retrospective storytelling.
Bob Katter’s predictable calls for racial crackdowns and collective punishment follow on cue. They always do. Such politics does not make Australians safer. It corrodes trust, narrows cooperation, and teaches whole communities that silence is safer than engagement.
That is how information dries up, not how it flows. We do not need a smaller, meaner, whiter Australia.
Media and the hunger for immediacy
The media environment bears responsibility too. In the first 24 hours, speculation raced ahead of verification. Some outlets responsibly reported confirmed facts and official statements. Others leapt straight into imagined foreign command chains, proxy wars and ideological pipelines before evidence existed. Guidelines on reporting mass violence exist for a reason.
Premature conjecture does not inform the public. It inflames it.
There is a difference between naming antisemitism and conscripting it into every geopolitical conflict on the map. The first is necessary. The second is reckless.
What honouring the dead requires
Honouring the victims means insisting on facts over fury. It means allowing investigators to do their work without political interference or media frenzy. It means refusing to let grief be converted into justification for ‘forever wars’, domestic panic or the erosion of civic trust.
There will be time to ask hard questions about gun licensing, early warning and prevention. Intelligence. Those debates matter. They will be stronger if they are grounded in what actually happened, not in whatever story we most want to tell.
And it means holding onto the image that should endure from Bondi. Not the slogans, not the hot takes, not the scramble to assign blame, but a man who ran toward gunfire to save strangers whose faith was not his own.
That act does not erase antisemitism.
It rebukes the idea that violence must harden us into camps. In the long struggle against extremism, solidarity like that starves hatred far more effectively than all the pious goodwill rhetoric of a lifetime.
Coda: facts, not appetite
Here are the facts as they stand.
Fifteen people were killed at a Hanukkah gathering on Bondi Beach. Two men carried out the attack. One was killed by police. One remains under guard. Police are not seeking a third suspect.
The victims were targeted because they were Jewish. That is the crime. Nothing else needs to be smuggled into it.
No public finding has established foreign direction, state sponsorship or organisational command. Those questions belong to investigators, not to press conferences.
One man intervened.
Ahmed al Ahmed disarmed a gunman, was shot, and survived. His actions saved lives.
Everything beyond this is commentary.
A serious country knows the difference between evidence and appetite.
A resilient country resists the urge to conscript grief.
A decent country insists on grief, respect and empathy before politics raises its voice.
Politics Ebook
That is not timidity. It is how democracies hold their shape when they are tested hardest.
In moments like these, when fear tempts us toward smaller versions of ourselves, the work is to stay open, stay decent, stay human. We owe all of this to all others in their inconsolable, inconceivably painful, grieving.
Above all, we must expect it of ourselves; surely, this is how we realise our common humanity.
Antinuclear 