Solidarity is appalled by the horrific mass shooting targeting the Jewish Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach yesterday. While the exact motives for the attack remain unclear, this is clearly an antisemitic attack.
Solidarity and the pro-Palestine movement have always opposed antisemitism and we condemn this attack on innocent people.
Sixteen people are dead including one of the shooters and authorities expect this toll may rise. Many other innocent people are in hospital.
Already there are attempts to use the Bondi attack to smear the pro-Palestine movement as well as to further demonise Arabs and Muslims.
Jillian Segal, the Albanese-appointed, pro-Israel antisemitism government envoy, has shamefully suggested that there is a link between the Sydney Harbour bridge protest against Israel’s genocide in Gaza and the attack on Bondi beach.
Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Saár didn’t even wait for Australian authorities to hold a press conference before claiming the attack was 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”.
In a racist tirade on Twitter Pauline Hanson blamed the attack on “weekly anti-semitic [sic] protests across our nation, hate speech from certain religious clerics, our obnoxious universities”.
But anti-Zionism is not antisemitism. The movement against the Gaza genocide is an inclusive, anti-racist movement that proudly includes many anti-Zionist Jews.
Far-right March for Australia organiser, Bec Freedom, responded to the killings by saying “deport them all. Jews and arabs [sic]”.
The Bondi attack must not become an excuse for inflaming Islamophobia, and attacks on Muslim, Arab or Palestinian communities.
Tragically the attack at Bondi beach is reminiscent of what Palestinians in Gaza have been suffering at the hands of the Israeli state for the last two years. Even in the two months since the ceasefire Israel had killed nearly 400 Palestinians.
The answer to Israel’s genocide, and our government’s complicity with it, is to continue to build a united movement against the genocide that opposes antisemitism and Islamophobia.
