The reactions to the Bondi Beach terrorist attack has shown how racist many posters are here.

[TheTamerShrew]

I’m posting because I’m struggling with how racism against Jews is being talked about here following the recent terrorist attack in Australia. What I’ve seen, again and again, is minimisation: it wasn’t really about Jews, it was more complicated than that, let’s not jump to conclusions, other groups have it worse. All the familiar caveats come out remarkably quickly when the victims are Jewish.

I want to say clearly: racism against Jews is racism. Full stop. It doesn’t become less serious because it’s uncomfortable, politically inconvenient, or doesn’t fit neatly into how some people understand racism. And it doesn’t need to compete with other forms of racism to be real or worthy of being named.

What I find particularly painful is how often antisemitism is explained away rather than confronted. We would rightly challenge this pattern if it happened after an attack on almost any other minority group. Yet when Jews are targeted, there seems to be an urge to dilute, reframe, or downplay what’s happened.
I’d really ask people to pause and self-reflect on why that might be.

Why does naming antisemitism feel harder?
Why is there a rush to qualify it, contextualise it out of existence, or deny it altogether?
Why is Jewish fear so often treated as oversensitivity rather than a rational response to a long and very real history?

Acknowledging racism is not an accusation against everyone else. It’s the first, necessary step in confronting it. If we can’t even name antisemitism when it’s staring us in the face, we have no chance of challenging it, let alone preventing it.

We don’t make the world safer by minimising hatred. We make it safer by recognising it honestly, even when that recognition makes us uncomfortable.

I hope this can be read in the spirit it’s intended: not to shut down discussion, but to ask people to explore and self reflect.

See the attached photo: in order to become Anti-racist, one needs to first acknowledge racism

In all the awfulness we saw some amazing bravery. Ahmed al-Ahmed who disarmed the older shooter and is recovering in hospital.
Reuven Morrison (62) who threw things at the older shooter to try and stop him, tragically shot and killed.
Boris (69) and Sofia (61) Gurman, locals passing by, who bravely tried to disarm the shooters as they first got out of their car, before becoming the first victims and dying in each other's arms.

Yes this goes for any post talking about how it’s expected and there’s a connection.

My goodness that’s so sad.

If you were to ask the men involved I'd be willing to bet good money they will say it was part of their motivation. So it plays a part. Not saying it justifies or legitimises their actions; but they will think it does and it may have been the specific incident that pushed ideological hatred over into actual violence, in the same way a woman leaving an abusive husband may be the trigger that pushes him over from abuse into murder. Noting that it has a bearing is not the same as making an excuse.

I live in London and have seen up close several times the Pro Palestine marches and I dont know how any reasonable person can conclude that they did not contain a large dose of outright antisemitism. Be it the 'from the river to the sea' chants through to placards with the Jewish Star of David wrapped around a Nazi swastika and 'Gaza is the new Auschwitz'. If I was Jewish I would not feel at all comfortable being anywhere near the march. Despite the repeated claims that the protests are anti israel rather then anti Jewish i simply can't agree with that statement given what I have seen wirh my own eyes.

Bondi Beach gunman Naveed Akram was a volunteer member of a street preaching group in Sydney’s west which has links to multiple Islamic State devotees, including self-declared martyrs and would-be soldiers.

A video from June 2019 shows a teenage Akram encouraging others to join the street preaching group:

“Whether it be raining, hailing or clear sky Allah will reward you for whatever actions you do in his cause … this will save you on the day of judgement.”

If a random Asian man was attacked in the street what type of person do you think would mention grooming gangs in relation to it?

So have I, while penned in with Stop The Hatred counter protesters, by police.

Possibly, and I might be wrong, millions and millions of people, Jewish and non-Jewish, regard Israel as the homeland and heartland of the Jewish people and the Jewish faith. That's the one thing.
The other thing is Israel is committing genocide in Gaza.
Some people - maybe, for example, those who've had their family slaughtered in Gaza, I'm not sure - would feel the need to retaliate somehow.
None of the above are justified, it's barbaric.
There is also a complicated history of the ME issue, esp over the last 80 or so yrs, and this is the latest page in that book.

People aren’t saying it is right but it it is well researched that events such as what is happening in Gaza breed terrorism. There are children right now who have witnessed and experienced such atrocities that will lead to horrific acts in the future. Negotiating peace is always the only remedy. Even then…People who make the connection are not in agreement with it. They are pointing out the obvious. Perhaps it is too soon to do that because the murders are too painful. I also think it is more painful for Jewish people. While the rest of us are horrified and emotional I don’t think we feel it in the same way as we would if we were Jewish and that is not because we devalue Jewish life. If it happened here in London we would feel even worse. If it happened to people from the same spiritual background as me even worse and so on. You can’t condemn people for being human.

They are individuals and not orchestrated groups, yet they are brainwashed by someone from the outside? So orchestrated after all?
And by whom exactly?
Do you think Nigel Farage or Tommy Robinson brainwashed them?
And “no one wants you dead”, really? Not even the “brainwashed” ones?
There was a foiled terror attack on a Christmas market in Germany last week, yet another one.
What do you think the alleged perpetrators’ goal was?

The people shooting in Australia witnessed it? Why would you excuse their behaviour as being human?

And some of us can see how deeply problematic this framing is- particularly the use of the word retaliation.

My issue is that many many posters are using this horrific attack to target and blame muslims.

I can't see anyone doing that on this thread, quite honestly. Perhaps they're doing it on some other social media you're absorbing, but this is not the place to attack posters who have done no such thing.

It's not our fault that "radical Islam" includes the word "Islam" despite being a perversion of it that has nothing to do with the Muslim faith. Maybe we should start calling it something else, but pretending it doesn't exist is not a sensible way forward when events like this are ramping up, including here in the UK.

This scumbag was hanging out with ISIS linked groups long before Oct 7. I seriously doubt that he was motivated by sympathy relating to Gaza, but from a generalised hatred of Jews and an ideology that tells him ( his words): "Whether it be raining, hailing or clear sky Allah will reward you for whatever actions you do in his cause … this will save you on the day of judgement.”

I agree with you.
The 7/7 bus attacks, the Ariana, Manchester concert attack, wasn’t assumed to be expected. There obviously is a connection to Islamic terror groupings in these attacks, this time it was the Jewish community, the excuses and reasoning is off the scale.

Retaliation on completely unconnected people including a 10 year old girl - makes sense.

I understand. It's also problematic when people can't face, even consider, reality.

What are people not considering? I don’t think it’s the case people can’t see the threat, they say it’s there. Just not for the reasons you do.

Just try asking yourself why youre on a thread about an antisemitic attack on innocent families explaining it because of 'Gaza'.

The hatred that arises in people commiting these attacks is as old as the hills. And you've got a gentle hand on their back whispering ' retaliation '.

The atrocities of 7 October were not caused by the Gaza war and were carried out by Gazan civilian mobs alongside Hamas. The mobs probably escalated things to a level of sadism that was beyond what Hamas intended. Are you expecting those attacks to "breed terrorism" among Israelis?

What breeds terrorism is a dangerous ideology that wants Israel and the Jewish people to be obliterated and promises material and heavenly rewards for anyone helping to achieve this.

7 October was a two-pronged attack: one "on the ground" as it were, and the other in the streets of our cities and on social media. The latter is gaining impetus, as evidenced by some of the responses on this thread.

I'm not really understanding the arguments here.

After 9/11, there was a huge reaction by non-Muslim Americans against Muslims who lived in America. The people who expressed a lot of anti-Muslim sentiments were probably bigots anyway, the sort of people who were homophobic and sexist and probably anti-Semitic, too. But they may not have given much thought to Islam before the attacks. After, their bigoted nature came out, enabled by so many others expressing the same thing after the attacks. Observing this effect is NOT to blame Muslims in, say, Saudi Arabia for 9/11. Or Muslims anywhere, for that matter. Neither is it saying that those reactions were right, or OK, or understandable. It is simply an observation of what happened.

As another poster wrote, the effects of events on terrorism is well-researched. To be clear, it's the terrorists' fault, and not the fault of anyone else.

The nutters of Hamas going on the rampage on October 7 somehow gave certain evil people licence to express their anti-Semitic views out loud. That is NOT to blame ordinary Muslims anywhere else. This is merely an observation of the phenomenon where some people take the side of evil when bad things happen.

What do you mean in this post, people have died due to the terrorism. That was the intention.