Bondi Beach attack: How western allies are enabling Netanyahu's grotesque logic

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu drew precisely the wrong conclusion from Sunday’s terror attack at Bondi Beach - and western leaders and media are once again buying into his warped logic.

Predictably, Netanyahu aimed to exploit the attack - in which more than a dozen people were killed by two gunmen at a Hanukkah celebration in Sydney - to implicitly justify Israel’s slaughter and maiming of tens of thousands of children in Gaza over the past two years. 

Netanyahu said he had written to the Australian prime minister, Anthony Albanese, a few months earlier to blame him not only for supposedly failing to tackle antisemitism in his country, but for fuelling it by recognising Palestinian statehood. 

Quoting from the letter, he said: “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.” 

In other words, Netanyahu holds any leader who makes a concession, however rhetorical, to the Palestinian people responsible for violence directed towards Jews. And he does so even if the concession is in accordance with international law and a recent International Court of Justice ruling requiring Israel to immediately end its unlawful occupation of the Palestinian territories, including Gaza. 

That puts plenty of other world leaders in Netanyahu’s sights, including Britain’s Keir Starmer, France’s Emmanuel Macron and Canada’s Mark Carney, alongside the leaders of Ireland, Spain, Portugal, Belgium and Norway. All have recently recognised Palestinian statehood. 

You might imagine that they would be keen to push back against Netanyahu’s suggestion of a link between the killings in Australia and the recognition of Palestinian rights. After all, he is implicitly stating that the slightest effort to relieve Palestinian suffering inexorably leads to attacks on Jews. Presumably, then, the West should leave Palestinians to suffer indefinitely. 

As if prisoners of Stockholm syndrome, western leaders appear only too ready to concede to Netanyahu’s twisted reasoning. 

Suspected war criminal

The first thing to note is the extraordinary fact that Netanyahu’s arguments about the Bondi Beach killings are receiving such a sympathetic airing by western media. Remember he is not a disinterested party, though you would never know it from the coverage.

International human rights groups, UN legal experts and genocide scholars are all agreed that he has overseen a two-year genocide in Gaza. Netanyahu himself is wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, in part for using starvation as a weapon of war against the enclave’s population. 

But this suspected war criminal - a fugitive from justice - is being given a platform by every western news outlet to turn reality on its head and blame others for a supposed “crisis of antisemitism” he is centrally responsible for stoking. 

The criminal isn't just being allowed to get away with his crimes. He is now the one being allowed to tell us who must be put on trial

The criminal isn’t just being allowed to get away with his crimes. He is now the one being allowed to tell us who must be put on trial.

Notice, too, the response from western leaders. See how quick they are to condemn an antisemitic terror attack, and how loudly - compared to how reluctant they have been for two years to even admit that the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the starvation of two million more has even taken place. 

This looks, once again, like deep-seated western racism towards Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, more than it does a problem of antisemitism in the West, as Netanyahu claims.

It in no way justifies the Bondi Beach attack to refuse to accept Netanyahu’s flawed logic, and to search for the real causes of such violence. 

Misdiagnosing those causes, as Netanyahu prefers, means the wounds that led to the violence will continue to fester. There is every reason, as we shall see, to believe that this is exactly what the Israeli prime minister wants.

Twisted logic

Netanyahu’s nonsensical logic - that abiding by international law in regards to Palestine leads to violence against Jews - makes sense only because for years, western leaders have conspired in a narrative that openly conflates criticism of Israel with hatred of Jews. 

Britain’s chief rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, was quick to echo this theme. He told the BBC that the Bondi Beach attack was a consequence of Israel being “demonised”. He called for further legal and police crackdowns on protests against Israel. 

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This is the same chief rabbi who concluded in early 2024, as the number of Palestinians killed by Israel in Gaza already stood at 23,000: “What Israel is doing is the most outstanding possible thing that a decent, responsible country can do for its citizens.” 

He praised Israeli troops in Gaza as “our heroic soldiers”, apparently forgetting that he is Britain’s chief rabbi, not Israel’s. He thereby conflated the Jewish people with Israel - something that would be denounced as antisemitic were a critic of Israel to do it. 

In fact, it has always been Israel’s goal to present itself as representing the interests of Jews everywhere, including those who are citizens of other states - and even the significant number who refuse to recognise the legitimacy of Israel’s ethnic supremacist agenda. 

Israeli leaders finally got their way in recent years with the widespread adoption of a new definition of antisemitism, formulated by a pro-Israel group called the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA). 

The IHRA’s much-criticised definition offers 11 examples of “antisemitism”, seven of which relate not to hatred of Jews, but to criticism of Israel. 

Antisemitism redefined

This radical reimagining of antisemitism opened the floodgates, just as Netanyahu and others hoped it would, to the claim that antisemitism was an increasing problem in western societies and needed aggressive action to tackle.

It meant that the more cruelly Netanyahu and Israel treated Palestinians - including by committing genocide in Gaza - the more pro-Israel lobbying groups could trumpet surveys that showed a steep rise in “antisemitism”.

Such “antisemitism”, of course, was not necessarily rooted in prejudice towards Jews. It was more usually an expression of anger towards a violent, highly militarised, out-of-control and utterly unaccountable state that is oppressing and killing Palestinians in the name of Jews everywhere. 

For example, in 2024, deep into Israel’s Gaza genocide, the Anti-Defamation League, a prominent pro-Israel lobbying group, carried out a survey that identified 9,354 “antisemitic” incidents across the US - the highest number since it began keeping records in 1979. 

The significant point was buried in the small print. For the first time, a clear majority of those incidents “contained elements related to Israel or Zionism” - the ideology of Jewish ethnic supremacism that is used to justify Israel’s long oppression of the Palestinian people.

In other words, a majority of these “antisemitic” incidents would most likely not have been considered antisemitic before the adoption of the IHRA definition.

Similarly, the BBC reported this week that the UK’s Community Security Trust, another pro-Israel group, has found record levels of anti-Jewish hate crime using the IHRA definition, noting that this “began to increase immediately after the 7 October 2023 attack by Hamas on Israel”. 

With anti-Israel sentiment formulated as “antisemitism”, it was inevitable that “antisemitism” would increase during Israel’s genocide. Moral people oppose genocide. In fact, it would have been deeply shocking if “antisemitism”, thus defined, had not risen. 

The devaluing of what antisemitism means has proved its worth over the past two years. By conflating criticism of Israel with antisemitism, Israel, its lobbyists, western governments and the media can now, in parallel, conflate entirely justified protests against Israel’s crimes with entirely unjustified terror against Jews.

No protest allowed

Netanyahu has been keen to blame social media for the rise of this new kind of “antisemitism” - because for the first time, it has allowed Palestinians and their allies to live-stream Israel’s racism and thuggery. 

Unsurprisingly, greater exposure of Israeli criminality has fed more anti-Israel sentiment, especially among western youth. It has also fuelled a greater sense of urgency that western governments must be pressured into ending their active collusion in the genocide. 

This healthy, ethical, democratic impulse is then denounced as a “crisis of antisemitism” - one that needs urgent action.

They want you to exclusively voice your anger for the victims of the Sydney gunmen … But you do not have to choose. You can be angry about both

Mirvis was at the forefront of efforts to weaponise the Bondi Beach attack this week, calling for anti-genocide protests - or what he termed “globalising the intifada” - to be crushed. He told the BBC: “What is the meaning of ‘globalise the intifada’? I’ll tell you the meaning … it’s what happened on Bondi Beach yesterday.” 

In fact, “intifada” is the word Palestinians have used for decades to describe their struggle to liberate themselves from what the world’s highest court ruled last year was Israel’s unlawful occupation, violent oppression and apartheid rule of Palestinians. 

Palestinians want to “globalise” their struggle by replicating the kind of international solidarity that overturned South Africa’s apartheid rule. But efforts in the West to promote a boycott and sanctions movement against Israel, echoing the one against apartheid South Africa, have been vilified as Jew hatred too. 

In fact, western leaders have treated all forms of protest - however non-violent - against Israel and its genocide as illegitimate, and as the wellspring of a new “antisemitism”. The Palestinian solidarity movement has been painted as racist and violent, whatever it does.

Rage silenced

It doesn’t take a genius to surmise that the stifling of non-violent protest risks provoking violence instead. We could call this the Palestinians’ dilemma: over decades, Israel has crushed largely non-violent struggles - such as the First Intifada in the 1980s, and the 2018 Great March of Return - thus encouraging a turn towards the violence of 7 October 2023.

Once again, explaining violence does not justify it. But explanations are necessary. They are the first and most important step in finding ways to mitigate the very circumstances that feed violence. 

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That means there is a duty on us all to try to identify the true causes of violence, and not simply close our minds by listening to those like Netanyahu whose interest is in offering self-serving rationales designed to excuse their own criminality.

When the true causes of violence are understood, a proper debate can be had. Efforts can be made to address those causes - precisely the course of action Netanyahu and western leaders wish to avoid at all costs in regards to Palestine. Why? Because the search for the roots of that violence land firmly at their door. 

Millions of people feel utterly powerless in the face of the most documented genocide of all time. Millions see their governments actively aiding Israel as it bombs civilians, ethnically cleanses whole communities, and starves children. 

Western leaders and media do not want you angry about any of this. They want you to exclusively voice your anger for the victims of the Sydney gunmen, while silencing your rage over the murder of tens of thousands of innocents in Gaza by Israel and its western partners.

But you do not have to choose. You can be angry about both. 

The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Eye.