18.12.2025
Heroes amidst the horror
Shock and trauma in the Jewish community is real and will be lasting. However, Zionists are cynically attempting to use the Bondi massacre to discredit the mass pro-Palestine movement. Marcus Strom reports from Sydney
While the surviving victims of the December 14 anti-Semitic massacre at Sydney’s Bondi beach were still in hospital undergoing treatment, Australia’s Zionists were already out of the blocks, seeking to pin the blame for the horrific event on the Palestine solidarity movement.
Spokesperson after spokesperson stood up to blame the movement against genocide for the acts of terrorism and abhorrent slaughter we saw on the first night of Hanukkah. The president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, David Ossip, said: “For two years people have paraded our streets and universities calling for the intifada to be globalised - a catchphrase that means ‘Kill Jews wherever you find them’. Last night, the intifada was globalised and came to Bondi.” Ossip has clearly graduated from the Zionist school of the big lie. Anyone with half an education knows ‘intifada’ means ‘uprising’ or ‘rebellion’ - in this case, against Israeli colonial oppression and occupation.
Australia’s ‘special envoy to combat anti-Semitism’, Jillian Segal, issued just her third statement since being appointed by the Labor government 18 months ago. Segal - a Zionist with impeccable credentials and ties to the far-right lobby group, Advance Australia - has said that the massacre was the inevitable result of “the hatred” on display at the Palestine solidarity demonstrations: “We … watched a march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge waving terrorist flags and glorifying extremist leaders. Now death has reached Bondi Beach.”
This is an explicit attempt to directly link people peacefully protesting against genocide to an anti-Semitic bloodbath committed by two people at Bondi. The Palestinian solidarity march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge on August 3 was one of the largest protests in Australian history. It is reprehensible to seek to smear the more than 200,000 people who took to the streets - horrified at both the ongoing slaughter in Gaza and attempts by the Australian and NSW Labor governments to ban the ‘March for Humanity’. Thousands of those protesting were Jewish, this author included - and now deeply shaken by the Bondi massacre.
Not linked
It is beyond revolting to use a massacre to further seek to cover up a genocide in Palestine, yet this is where the Zionist movement has landed. Benjamin Netanyahu has directly linked the Australian recognition of Palestinian statehood to it, saying the decision, taken in September in coordination with Britain and Canada, “pours fuel on the anti-Semitic fire … emboldens those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets”.
Zionists are now seeking to further weaponise anti-Semitism to accelerate the assault on civil liberties and the Palestinian protest movement in defence of a murderous Israeli regime. They are morally and factually incapable of defending the actions of Israel and so seek to smear the entire solidarity movement with acts that have nothing to do with us. Equating the two murderous anti-Semites to a mass movement is no better than equating the murderous and genocidal acts of Israel with all Jews.
The response of prime minister Anthony Albanese is coming under direct fire from the Zionists, who now see him as an easy target. The government has moved quickly to restrict gun ownership, but the rightwing press has called gun law reform a ‘distraction’.
Former Liberal Treasurer Josh Frydenberg has called on Albanese to follow moves in Britain to criminalise chants on Palestine demonstrations referring to the intifada. The conservative Liberal Party, which has been wallowing in the polls since the May election, sees an opportunity to use this tragedy to claw back support by seeking to label Albanese as ‘soft on anti-Semitism’ - code for not supporting Israel vigorously enough.
This is rubbish, of course. Albanese has been in lockstep with most imperialist powers on the question of Israel, subordinating Australian foreign policy to the diktats of global empire. Australia has never acknowledged a genocide, while Albanese has continued to allow the two-way arms trade with Israel. No sanctions have been contemplated and Australian firms have continued to supply parts to the F-35 programme which arms the Israeli airforce. Defence minister Pat Conroy has bragged that Australia continues to import Israeli weaponry, saying: “We make no apology for getting the best possible equipment for the Australian Defence Force.”
Meanwhile, Segal is using the moment to push her ‘Plan to Combat anti-Semitism’1 - largely seen as an attempt to muzzle any criticism of Israel. Her recommendations include giving herself power to moniter the media and propose cutting off funding from universities and arts organisations that are allegedly “facilitating anti-Semitism”.
On the rise
Let’s be clear: of course, anti-Semitic incidents have been on the rise in Australia. That must be combatted by the workers’ movement and, yes, people with backward, racist ideas about Jews must be challenged and educated. I was at a union conference last week where some delegates questioned whether anti-Semitism was really on the increase. A representative of the (anti-Zionist) Jewish Council of Australia and myself said that of course it is.
Given that Israel and Zionism both contend that they speak for all Jews, some people not only take them at their word, but project their view of Israel onto all Jews - a reactionary and bigoted error. This is made more likely, given the absence of any coherent, mass socialist and democratic alternative to the global system of imperialism, for which Zionism is a useful tool.
Iranian diversion
Even with a rise in incidents, the NSW police has confirmed that some acts initially reported as anti-Semitic were not so. And, in a strange move, the Australian government expelled the Iranian ambassador, linking the Islamic Republic to some of the criminal acts aimed at Jewish businesses and places of worship. But it is not claiming such a link for Bondi. The father-and-son pair alleged to have committed the massacre have been linked to Salafi Sunni extremists, and are said to be inspired by the Islamic State movement, which is hostile to Iran.
Two things: first, the Palestine solidarity movement has been trenchant from the start that anti-Semitism will not be tolerated. Yes, chants of “Fuck the Jews” were heard at the first demonstration on October 9 2023, but the Palestine Action Group quickly clamped down and said that any such anti-Semitic sentiment was incompatible with being on its demonstrations.
Second, it is clear that Zionists and Israel want to equate all Jewish identity with support for Israel. This is a driving force in anti-Semitic sentiment. A brutal fact is that Zionism relies on anti-Semitism as a motivating factor. A leading figure of Jews Against the Occupation in Sydney, Michelle Berkon, was forcibly removed by police from a mourning event at Bondi this week because she was wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh. She rightly made the point that Israeli flags were being flown and that all Jews should be able to mourn the deaths of so many people. Zionists clearly consider her to be the ‘wrong type of Jew’.
Anti-Semitism, of course, is a real and revolting aspect of modernism with roots going back to feudal Christian Europe. Jews have long been a scapegoat for the reactionary right - from Russian pogroms in the 19th century to the holocaust of the 20th. But we now live in a bizarre world, where mainstream Zionist groups defended anti-Semitic loons like Elon Musk when he delivered his Nazi-like salute during the Trump campaign last year. Zionism certainly did not create anti-Semitism, but is a response to it. It is a real fact of capitalist society, and the left and workers’ movement must not resile from combatting it.
Courage
As acts of respect and mourning, planned Palestine protests this week have been postponed. I’m not sure this is the right move, as it implies that pro-Palestine protests are indeed anti-Jewish, which they are not. They could have been transformed into mourning events. Meanwhile, the NSW Labor Friends of Palestine WhatsApp group has put a pause on discussion - an act that shows a fear of what might be said.
Moments of tremendous courage amidst the horror ought to be celebrated. Five people attempted to stop the shooters. Three of them paid with their lives. Reuven Morrison, who hurled a brick at the older assailant, was shot and unfortunately died. A couple had tried to disarm the shooters as they left their car, which had an Islamic State flag on it. They too were shot - the first victims.
Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian migrant and shopkeeper who arrived in Australia in 2006, tackled one of the shooters, disarming him - an act seen in footage around the world. He was later shot and is now recovering in hospital. A hero. Another man, on a refugee visa, who has not been named, risked his life by kicking a gun away from the wounded shooter, who had been shot by police. Both he and al-Ahmed are Muslims - an inconvenient fact for some.
Squandered
The massive Sydney demonstration of August now seems a long time ago - the moment to reorganise the Palestinian movement as a national democratic united organisation2 was squandered. Now social media will no doubt act as an accelerant to conspiracy theories on all sides. Iran as the motivator? A Mossad-organised ‘false flag’? Such idiotic ideas are already being spread by demented keyboard warriors.
The Palestine Action Group in Sydney has issued an excellent statement, which in part says:
We are shocked and absolutely horrified by the terrorist attack at Bondi beach, which targeted the Jewish community on the first day of Hanukkah … No-one - anywhere in Sydney or anywhere in the world - should have to live in fear of terrorism or racist hate.
We reiterate our complete condemnation of anti-Semitism and all other forms of racism. For years, we have stood and marched in our hundreds of thousands, side by side with members of the Jewish community, to fight for a world free of racist violence and oppression. From Sydney to Gaza, anti-Semitism has never had any place in our movement, nor in the world we want to live in.
On campuses and in general society, attempts to silence the pro-Palestine movement will no doubt increase and must be resisted. The NSW government has recalled parliament in order to pass laws giving police powers to ban demonstrations during times of terrorist incidents. A regressive move.
We can oppose individual acts of terror and oppose the state terrorism of Israel at the same time. The attack on Bondi seems all the more challenging to those in Australia, as it destroyed a social event at an iconic location. The shock and trauma of this will be real and lasting in the Jewish community and the city of Sydney, where such events are rare.
Yet the daily terror inflicted by Israel on the Palestinian people are just as horrific - but hidden behind a screen of banal industrial normality. Since the ‘ceasefire’ started on October 10, nearly 400 Palestinians have been killed by Israel. But simple attempts at ‘whataboutism’ are pointless. It is incumbent upon the socialist and democratic left to organise, so that our movement becomes a real physical force, able to overcome a state of affairs where despair still rules and hope is diminished.
Marcus Strom is editor of Labor Tribune