Bondi Beach and Israeli Politics After 7 October |
A society does not merely endure a mass casualty attack. It begins to argue differently afterwards. In Israel, October 7th has tightened the definition of what counts as pragmatic and what is dismissed as reckless. Positions that once competed as policy choices increasingly present themselves as matters of basic competence.
One reason is that Israeli Jewish politics is rarely only Israeli. It carries a long historical education that was not learned in one place, and not learned once. Israeli Jews live with sovereignty, and with the daily knowledge that sovereignty can fail. Many Jews outside Israel live with civic inclusion, and with the separate knowledge that inclusion can be withdrawn without any formal announcement. The difference is not moral; it is structural. It changes how people weigh risk, how they hear threats, and how they interpret reassurance.
Bondi Beach matters here precisely because it does not sit within Israel’s borders. When political violence reaches a public beach in Australia, it disrupts a common Diaspora assumption that danger belongs elsewhere, or at least that it can be managed as a remote concern. For minorities, the aftermath often matters as much as the event itself. Harassment, vandalism, and public hostility are not always numerically large, but they are socially instructive. They indicate how quickly a public can switch from........