Following the Bondi Beach attack, the exact familiar pattern has emerged. Suddenly, Jews are living in a state of constant fear, antisemitism is spiralling out of control, and criticising Israel is somehow equivalent to inciting violence against Jews. This narrative however, avoids confronting the uncomfortable truth necessary to ensure genuine safety for Jewish people.

At some point, we need to be honest about reality.

The danger facing Jewish communities today does not emerge from anti-war protests, Palestinian solidarity, or criticism of Israeli policy. It arises from the insistence that Zionism speaks for all Jews and that the actions of a violent settler-colonial state are synonymous with Jewish survival. 

That equation has been catastrophic and predicted by Albert Einstein right after the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. 

As a decolonial researcher, and as someone whose political consciousness was shaped in a “post-colonised” World, I believe that the decolonisation process must involve the return of land to its rightful Palestinian owners. I reject the idea of  European settler claims, particularly those of Ashkenazi Jews with no continuous historical presence in Palestine, it can be laundered into legitimacy through the language of “Jewish self-determination.” I align myself with the critical perspectives of anti-colonial scholars such as Ilan Pappé and Patrick Wolfe, who compellingly argue that colonial projects do not become moral simply because they adopt the vocabulary of trauma.  

My critique is specifically directed at Zionism and the violent actions of the Israeli state, not at the Jewish faith or cultural community as a whole.

READ: Australian PM rejects Netanyahu’s claim linking Sydney attack to Palestinian state recognition 

Decoupling faith from political violence

As a Muslim, I refuse the demand that I must apologise for the crimes of the ISIS Bondi attack simply because they claim Islam as their banner. I am no more responsible for ISIS than a Christian is responsible for the Ku Klux Klan or Anders Breivik. Violent movements routinely weaponise religion and they are not its theological custodians.

Yet Muslims are persistently held collectively accountable in ways that no other faith community is. This double standard is dangerously........

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