Anti semitism - Bondi beach - when will it stop?

[mids2019]

Thoughts and prayers to those killed and injured in Australia.

Historically the left wing or in the case of the Labour Party has always been associated with anti semitism: @1dayatatime

Your history seems to only go back a few years to the antisemitism furore of the Corbyn era.
Prior to that and for most of the 20th century British Jews were more aligned with the Labour party than the Tories. But don't let the facts get in the way.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_British_Jewish_politicians

See how many are labour, or prior to that, liberal.

If it’s recent it’s something that they’ve lost that connection.

Yes - I agree it’s all dark and sad . And I hear you - you feel for all the victims. As do I.
You’ve articulated it well enough.
Anyone who shows awareness that they’re are victims and villains on both sides is probably on the right side.

It’s much more complicated than that @mouthpipette.
Antisemitism continued in Soviet Russia.
Antisemitism is ( As has been said many times) the canary in the coal mine that lets us know if we have gone too far left or right .
Extreme politics is the problem - whether right or left - the extremists always look for scapegoats.

Robert Maxwell, to name just one Labour MP.

But then Labour MP Gerald Kaufman, a believer in Palestinian Statehood who called for sanctions against Israel, said this in the House of commons, 2002.

"It is time to remind Sharon that the Star of David belongs to all Jews, not to his repulsive Government. His actions are staining the star of David with blood. The Jewish people, whose gifts to civilised discourse include Einstein and Epstein, Mendelssohn and Mahler, Sergei Eisenstein and Billy Wilder, are now symbolised throughout the world by the blustering bully Ariel Sharon, a war criminal implicated in the murder of Palestinians at the Sabra and Shatila camps and now involved in killing Palestinians once again."

Still appropriate, just change a couple of names.
Was Kaufman an antisemite ?

'Was Kaufman an anti semite?' He was a self hating Jew - the worst kind.

I’m left wing in the UK and I’m horrified by these attacks. No one should be afraid to go shopping or to celebrate religious holidays.

@HappyFace2025
If he's a self-hating Jew, then logic says that he is indeed an antisemite.
Shows you just how meaningless,.... sometimes..... that word can be.
It gets thrown around a lot.

Right. Both sides have behaved appallingly recently. But the online discourse always seems to be 'if you don't support Israel and its actions you support terrorists'.

Now the Australian government is being blamed for the Bondi attacks because various State governments (different jurisdiction!) allowed pro Palestine rallies to be held since 2023. Conveniently forgetting that the main shooter was confirmed as being connected with ISIS since at least 2019.

Well quite a lot of people consider this. Islamic extremists and the far right to have more commonalities than differences. There has been a fair bit of research on this.

A traditional view of gender
An outside group that they see as a threat which justifies violence against them
Anti democracy.

But the online discourse always seems to be 'if you don't support Israel and its actions you support terrorists'.

Exactly.

Why can’t people see the nuance??

Of course the ideologies are indeed very similar. One thing that differentiates them? The islamists regularly target innocent civilians to terrorise.
Yes i know - Brevik, Christchurch, unabomber - those seem to be exceptional one-offs.
Islamic terrorism is almost an everyday occurrence in the west.

He certainly sounds like one so I'm going with yes.

@Manova14 The vast majority of victims of Islamic extremists are Muslim and live in Muslim majority countries of course.

Luckily we don’t face the same “everyday” terrorist threat in the west. Although the biggest threat here is still Islamic extremism but the threat of far right violence has risen considerably and cannot be considered one offs. If we look to the US far right extremism is already causing more deaths.

I think religious fundamentalism and far right ideologies are just two sides of the same coin.

I’ve tried to see the nuance but the chanting ( Globalise the Intifada ) the tearing down of posters / the masked protesters/ Bob Vylan and Kneecap etc using anti semitic terrorist tropes as a way of gaining publicity/ Jewish symbols such as the Star of David desecrated / Jewish schools and places of worship across the whole world needing protection….
I’m just not sure what you mean by nuance?

How completely pointless is this post?

The nuance is that one can disagree with all those awful things happening to Jewish people and hate anti-semitism whilst also disagreeing with what has been done by the Israel government and IDF in Gaza.

The nuance is that one can chant Free Palestine and not think Israel should be destroyed.

The nuance is that one can believe in a cause and disagree with violence being used to further that cause.

My dd would think twice about walking into a synagogue which is so very sad considering she is Jewish. And her children’s’ generation will never have that lovely sense of community that we’ve taken for granted. So sad.

How recently has an instance of far right terrorism targeted/killed multiple civilians in Australia/NZ, The UK, Western Europe?
I think it's probably Christchurch in 2019.

How recently has an instance of Islamic terrorism [ditto]?

• A couple of days ago in Australia
• October in Manchester
• Last Christmas in Germany

I'm sure there are more that aren't even newsworthy.

OK not every day, not literally, but so common that people are right to be alarmed by it.
Of course the majority of victims are in Muslim countries. That is shit too. But that's not where I live. I live in a supposedly secular country with supposed freedom of religion.

Edit: and the US is it's own case due to guns and Christian fanatics.

Two recent-ish cases in Australia of far-right sovereign citizens murdering multiple police officers, at least one in a planned/premeditated way.

Police aren't civilians.

The surviving Bondi beach gunman Naveed Akram has been charged with 15 counts of murder, terrorism and wounding with intent to murder. He will appear in a bedside court hearing this afternoon.

Police allege they found two homemade Islamic state flags in his car alongside incendiary explosive devices.

Mourners gathered at a synagogue yesterday for the first of the victims’ funerals. Rabbi Eli Schlanger was remembered as a devoted husband and loving father to his five children, including his 2 month old son.

Rabbi Levi Woolf described him as “one of the purest and most sincere and compassionate people any of us have known”.

In an emotional tribute, Eli’s father in law described Sunday’s attack as “ our own seventh of October”.

Many are commentating that it is wrong to avoid links between the global pro Palestinian movement and the terrorist atrocities that have occurred recently world wide. It is time to clearly admit that there are those that support pro Palestinian positions who do harbour thoughts about harming Jews and prepared to act on them. It is no coincidence that Islamist terror groups including Hamas have a common ideology of simply killing Jews ; there is no ambiguity here.

We should look at Islamic terrorism as a global threat and not let Gaza become a convenient shield to prevent vigour in combating this decades long pernicious threat that produced such horrors as 9/11 and 10/7. The cause of the conflict in Gaza was partly due to the appointment of an Islamic terror group as leaders of a territory to a large extent.

I think there’s a clear link between 7/10 and an increase in antisemitic attacks such as the one in Australia. The anti Israel rhetoric is allowing people who already dislike Jews to speak more freely knowing that the antisemitic views they already hold will seem more unacceptable now to many people. I’ve seen on other threads people trying to frame this attack on Jews in Australia as being somehow understandable in relation to Gaza.

Not every person who takes a pro Palestinian position harbours thoughts about harming Jews, though. I think a lot of them are genuine people who feel sorry for the awful life of Gazans since this war began and want peace for the sake of everyone. It’s easy to spot those that want peace in Gaza and those that seem to almost relish the atrocities of war as it allows them the opportunity to spread hate against Israel.