Exactly eleven years separate the Lindt Café siege in Sydney’s iconic and busy Martin Place and last Sunday’s killings near Bondi. But eleven years is not a long time.

Eleven years, however, is long enough for a nation or a people to convince itself that trauma belongs to the past, that lessons have been learned, and that history bends naturally towards safety, logic, and reason. But extremist violence does not retire quietly. It mutates, waits, and returns—often in forms we prefer not to recognise until it is too late.

In December 2014, Australians watched in disbelief as a lone Islamist gunman held hostages inside a café in the heart of Sydney’s financial district. The black flag of ISIS in the cafe window, the language of historical grievance and moral absolutism, and the ritualised performance of terror were unmistakable.

The Lindt Café siege was not simply a criminal act; it was ideological violence, staged for symbolism as much as for bloodshed. It was meant to terrify, to divide, and to announce that no public space was beyond reach.

Last Sunday’s killings on the golden sands of world-famous Bondi Beach shattered a similar illusion, that is, ordinary life, sunlit and communal, cannot remain immune to the sudden brutality of human evil. Different circumstances, different original motivations, different methods. And yet the echo of gunfire is unmistakable. Source: Shutterstock.

Once again, a public place became a killing ground. Once again, the randomness was the point. Once again, families were left to mourn while a nation searched for language strong enough to explain the rupture.

The temptation, especially in democratic, pluralistic societies, is to insist these events are unrelated. One was terrorism; the other, perhaps, a lone act of rage or derangement. One carried an overt ideology; the other may not have worn its creed so plainly.

But focusing only on surface distinctions risks missing the deeper and more dangerous continuity: the normalisation of mass violence as a means of expression, identity, or grievance.

It is........

© The Times of Israel (Blogs)