Truthout’s December fundraiser is our most important of the year and will determine the scale of work we will be able to do in 2026. Please support us with a tax-deductible donation today.

When news broke of the Bondi Beach shooting, those of us in the global Palestine solidarity movement knew immediately what was coming. We’ve seen this pattern: when liberation movements challenge state power and when genocide is named and resisted, states seize on any incident, any tragedy, to justify criminalizing that resistance. Since October 2023, as Israel has carried out genocide in Gaza, Australia has built an apparatus to suppress Palestine solidarity: envoys, task forces, and “safety” initiatives that treat anti-genocide organizing as a threat.

We knew the Bondi shooting would be weaponized against us because Zionism — through Israeli state institutions, lobby groups, and complicit governments — has made Jewish safety inseparable from Israeli state interests. It is not because of any connection to Palestine, but because the victims were Jewish. Zionism has constructed a system where any harm to Jews, regardless of context or motive, becomes justification to criminalize Palestine solidarity and crush demands for liberation.

Within hours, despite minimal details and no established motive, Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu blamed Australia’s recognition of Palestinian statehood, claiming it “pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.” After the shooting, he declared Australia had “let the disease spread and the result is the horrific attacks on Jews we saw today.” Israeli officials claimed “the blood of the victims is on the hands of the Australian government” for not standing “unequivocally” with Israel. The New York Times published Bret Stephens’ op-ed: “Bondi Beach Is What ‘Globalize the Intifada’ Looks Like.” The Atlantic ran “The Intifada Comes to Bondi Beach.”

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese spoke of those who seek to “extinguish light and promote darkness” — echoing Netanyahu’s framing of a “war between children of light and the children of darkness” to justify extermination in Gaza. By deploying the rhetoric of light versus darkness, it lays the foundations for a moral and legal framework where anything deemed threatening to the existing order — which, as we’ve established, includes Palestine solidarity — becomes a legitimate target for state repression.

Jillian Segal — Australia’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism and an........

© Truthout