You might have thought that the anti-Semitic massacre on Bondi Beach last Sunday would finally prompt some kind of self-reflection on the part of Western politicians, pundits and ‘anti-Zionist’ activists. That they might start wondering if their treatment and, in some cases, obsessive demonisation of the world’s only Jewish State might be fuelling a violent hatred of Jews. But sadly that has not been the case. Instead, from those gently critical of Israel to Keffiyeh-wearing activists, we’ve seen denial, hedging and cognitive dissonance.
Take Britain’s prime minister, Keir Starmer. Having said nothing about the Islamic fundamentalists and their fellow travellers screaming ‘globalise the Intifada’ on Britain’s streets throughout his 16 months in power, he was among the first to dish out thin platitudes to Australia’s Jews. ‘The news that the Bondi beach attack was an anti-Semitic terrorist attack… is sickening’, he said. ‘The United Kingdom will always stand with… the Jewish community.’
This, remember, was the same Starmer who, just three months ago, rewarded Hamas for the rape and slaughter of hundreds of Jews on 7 October 2023 by officially recognising a Palestinian state. The idea that Britain’s Labour government can be counted on to ‘stand with the Jewish community’ is absurd.
Others followed Starmer’s bland statement. Home secretary Shabana Mahmoud said she was ‘appalled’ and ‘horrified’. Deputy prime minister David Lammy offered his ‘prayers’ and reassured Jews that they ‘are not alone’. Neither made any mention of the likely Islamist motivation for the attack beyond vague talk of ‘anti-Semitism’. London mayor Sadiq Khan, in charge of a city that endured a record number of anti-Semitic incidents in the months following 7 October, offered his thoughts and condolences on X. The day before, he was warning about the alleged dangers of Donald Trump, whose rhetoric has supposedly normalised a ‘massive increase of anti-Muslim’ sentiment. Of course, Khan has never once condemned the ‘anti-Zionist’ hate marches on his own doorstep.
Australian politicians have at points been just as evasive as their British counterparts. So it was, following the worst terrorist attack in Australia’s history, that Labor MP Lola McEvoy decided to declare, ‘Diversity is our strength’ – a slogan so removed from reality at this point that it’s impossible to imagine McEvoy saying it without her simultaneously clutching her knees to her chest and rocking back and forth. One wonders where McEvoy was on 9 October 2023, when a thousand-strong mob gathered outside Sydney Opera House to chant ‘gas the jews’, days after the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust. Where was strength through diversity that day?
Some in the mainstream media, meanwhile, seemed to think that their audience might have difficulty empathising with Jews. BBC Radio 4 Today presenter Nick Robinson invited those struggling to appreciate the horror of what had just happened ‘to think of the impact on the Muslim and, indeed, the wider community of the Christchurch mosque attack in New Zealand’. Apparently, if you ‘do not have any Jewish family or friends’, the best way to appreciate the horror of an anti-Semitic massacre is to recall the horror of an anti-Muslim one from 2019.
While politicians and mainstream-media types have offered up a mixture of Chat-GPT-generated sympathy and bewilderment, the internet’s loudest pro-Palestine voices have opted for denial. This was ‘a sickening anti-Semitic attack on Australian Jews’, admitted journalist Owen Jones, who has spent the best part of his life frothing at the mouth at the mere mention of Israel. ‘There’s no cause it’s driven by’, he added sagely, ‘and no cause it advances, other than hatred’. His refusal to acknowledge any sort of ‘cause [the massacre might be] driven by’ is quite something. After all, the younger of the two shooters allegedly had ties to the Islamic State. We can have a pretty good guess at what his cause was likely to be – an Islamist declaration of holy war against the Jews.
Far worse than Jones’s response was that of ‘green industrialist’ and Labour donor Dale Vince. Incredibly, he blamed the Bondi massacre on ‘Israel committing genocide in Gaza’. That is, he blamed the mass murder of Jews on the Jewish State itself. He even complained that the Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, ‘wants anti-Semitism to be a thing, it validates him’ – as if anti-Semitism were no more than a made-up panic. A former Gaza correspondent for the BBC gave a conspiracy theory-laden twist to the victim-blaming, claiming that there are ‘Zionist Mossad fingerprints in Sydney’. He then accused Netanyahu of advancing the ‘narrative that Jews are the victims’.
One useful online idiot so very nearly hit the nail on the head. He claimed that since the shooters ‘did not go down to the sand to check’ which of the beach-goers ‘are or are not Zionists’, the attack must have been indiscriminate. Never mind that this horrific event took place on a Jewish holiday, when the beach was filled with Jewish Australians. What the commenter nearly grasped is that the perpetrators didn’t care who is or isn’t a ‘Zionist’, full stop. They had one objective in mind – killing Jews.
How many more will have to lose their lives before the penny drops? The rise of anti-Semitism – and the Islamist extremism that’s driving it – is now impossible to ignore. Only the most shameless would continue to deny it.
Georgina Mumford is an editorial assistant at spiked.
