Netanyahu Suggests Australia’s Recognition of Palestinian State Fueled Shooting |
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Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has sparked outrage for using the horrific shooting at a Hanukkah event in Bondi Beach to further his agenda of blocking the establishment of a Palestinian state.
Just hours after the shooting that killed 15 people and hospitalized 38, Netanyahu boasted that he had been warning Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese for months that his policies are accelerating antisemitism. “Your call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire. It rewards Hamas terrorists,” he said. He then likened the policy to a “cancer” and said that it was a sign of “weakness.”
“You let the disease [of antisemitism] spread, and the result was the attack on Jews we saw today,” Netanyahu said at a press conference. He went on to say that attackers like the ones responsible for the Bondi Beach shooting “attack us because they attack the West,” and linked the shooting, without evidence, to the killing of U.S. service members in Syria this weekend.
Albanese rejected this framing, reiterating his calls for a two-state solution and saying that his only job now is to “promote unity” after the attack. “This has been an........