{"id":6419,"date":"2025-12-16T03:16:12","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T01:16:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/?p=6419"},"modified":"2025-12-16T03:16:12","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T01:16:12","slug":"bondi-beach-silence-critics-israel-genocide","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/2025-12-16\/bondi-beach-silence-critics-israel-genocide\/","title":{"rendered":"The lobby is milking the Bondi Beach attack to silence critics of Israel’s genocide"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"It is years of dedicated work by the Israel lobby that has ensured the mass murder of Palestinians is viewed by governments, the media and parts of the Jewish community as entirely legitimate<\/strong><\/em><\/p>\n

I, for one, am struggling to stomach the spew of hypocrisy from pro-Israel groups like the Community Security Trust and its policy director, Dave Rich, in the wake of Sunday\u2019s Bondi Beach attack.<\/p>\n

Establishment media, on the other hand, appear to have a bottomless appetite for efforts by Israel apologists to exploit the genuine fear and grief of the Jewish community to advance a political agenda \u2013 one designed to silence criticism of Israel over its two-year slaughter and maiming of Palestinian children in Gaza.<\/p>\n

Predictably, the supposedly liberal Guardian once again gave Rich a prominent slot<\/a> in its comment pages, this time to spin the attack in Sydney into a demand for silencing opposition to Israel\u2019s genocide.<\/p>\n

Here are extracts from Rich\u2019s piece in italics, followed by my observations. His all-too-obvious double standards and his glaring misdirection ploys should have disqualified this piece from publication. But the British media simply can\u2019t get enough of this kind of bilge.<\/p>\n\"\"\n

Rich: \u201cThe mobile phone footage of two gunmen calmly taking aim at families enjoying a Hanukah party is utterly chilling. It takes a special kind of dehumanisation, an ideology of pure hatred and self-righteous conviction, to do that.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

If Rich is so troubled by issues of dehumanisation, why has he remained so steadfastly mute about the long and utterly chilling dehumanisation of Palestinians by Israel and by its lobby groups, including his own organisation? Remember, Israeli leaders called the Palestinians \u201chuman animals\u201d. It is decades of that kind of dehumanisation that laid the ground for Israel\u2019s genocide. It is precisely because of such dehumanisation that the live-streamed horrors of the past two years made barely any impact on the Israeli public or on opinion among Israel\u2019s supporters.<\/p>\n

The truth is it is Rich and his fellow pro-Israel lobbyists who are the ones in the grip of an \u201cideology of pure hatred\u201d \u2013 one that chooses to excuse the mass murder of children when they are Palestinian, blown to pieces and starved for months on end by the very state he identifies with.<\/p>\n

Rich: \u201cThe whole basis of western liberal democracy, the belief in shared values within a diverse society, is endangered by these attacks.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

No, it\u2019s not the Bondi Beach attack that has endangered \u201cwestern liberal democracy\u201d. That was irreversibly hollowed out when western leaders chose to actively collude in Israel\u2019s genocide and defy the rulings of the world\u2019s most respected legal institutions, the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court. Western liberal democracy was hollowed out when these leaders chose to side with Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu and prioritise his exterminationist agenda over the rule of law.<\/p>\n

Rich: \u201cSome people react as if this terrorism is akin to a natural disaster or unforeseen tragedy: blind hatred with no cause or purpose, and therefore no deeper explanation needed. But terrorism does not emerge from a vacuum. It is merely the most violent, lethal expression of a set of attitudes and beliefs that are much more widely held than just by those who wield the gun or the knife.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

How true! Terrorism does not occur in a vacuum. Rather, it is the weapon of the weak, and it feeds off a festering hatred that derives from having one\u2019s community abused and a parallel, suffocating feeling of powerlessness to stop it. That doesn\u2019t justify the Bondi Beach attack, but it does provide us with the \u201cdeeper explanation\u201d Rich claims to be searching for.<\/p>\n

But even before we read on, we know where he wants to take this.<\/p>\n

Rich: \u201cWhen it comes to antisemitic terror, the ideas that some take as justification for murder are popularised and normalised through the language of much of the anti-Israel movement that has marched up and down our city streets and through our university campuses these past two years.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

And sure enough, there it is. The \u201cantisemites\u201d, according to Rich and the rest of the pro-Israel lobby, are British families marching though their towns and cities to protest a genocide in which the British govermment is actively colluding. They are the criminals, not Israel\u2019s genocide machine.<\/p>\n

The \u201cantisemites\u201d, Rich wants you to believe, are those incensed by witnessing Israel slaughter children day after day for more than two years; those incensed at seeing Israel bomb the hospitals needed to treat those children; those incensed at hearing Israel and its supporters deny what we have all seen happening with our own eyes; and those incensed that our governments have not only failed to stop this horror show but have actively demonised their own populations for highlighting their complicity in these crimes.<\/p>\n

Rich: \u201cAfter rapper Bobby Vylan, one half of the group Bob Vylan, chanted \u201cDeath, death to the IDF\u201d during a set at the Glastonbury festival in June, it became the rallying cry of anti-Israel protesters everywhere. It got Bob Vylan invited to the Irish parliament and Bobby Vylan on to Louis Theroux\u2019s podcast. Far from a call for death putting the rapper beyond the pale, it made him a celebrity.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

It takes extraordinary chutzpah to exploit the blood spilled in Sydney by special pleading for an Israeli army that is recognised by all major human rights groups, the United Nations, the International Association of Genocide Scholars, and the International Criminal Court to have been routinely committing crimes against humanity in Gaza over the past two years.<\/p>\n

If Dave Rich and the Community Security Trust are really so concerned about the dangers faced by Jews because of the many documented, and unpunished, crimes committed by the Israeli army, then maybe he should dedicate a little space to distancing himself and his organisation from that military rather than denying its criminality at every opportunity.<\/p>\n

Rich: \u201cIs there a connection between this embrace of a call for death in the name of Palestinian rights, and people inflicting actual death apparently in the name of the same cause? As soon as you ask the question, the answer seems obvious.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Both sides can play this game. Is there a connection between the embrace of calls for genocide in the name of Jewish supremacy, and Israeli soldiers inflicting actual death in the name of that cause? Remember Israel\u2019s head of the military said he would deny the people of Gaza food, water and fuel, supposedly in \u201cself-defence\u201d, and that\u2019s exactly what Israel did. Remember Netanyahu himself described the people of Gaza as \u201cAmalek\u201d, a people condemned to genocide by God, and genocide is exactly what Israel did.<\/p>\n

Indeed, as soon as you ask the question, the answer seems obvious. But in the case of Gaza, the death toll is many thousands of times greater than anything inflicted by two twisted gunmen in Sydney.<\/p>\n

Rich: \u201cThe devastation in Gaza is real and lots of people involved in pro-Palestinian activism do not support antisemitic violence against Jews, whether in Britain or Australia. But like it or not, it seems this movement has generated and sustained a political culture in which violence is both conceivable and enacted.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Even were this true, it cannot compare to the political culture generated by Rich and his pro-Israel lobbyists. That political culture has not only made violence against Palestinians conceivable but a daily reality for them decade after decade. It is years of dedicated work by the Israel lobby that has ensured the mass murder of Palestinians is viewed by governments, the media and parts of the Jewish community as entirely legitimate.<\/p>\n

Rich:<\/em> \u201cThis is now a global emergency of antisemitism, and it is the consequence of two years of turning a blind eye, taking the easy path and ignoring the warnings. Make no mistake: alongside the grief and the defiance, Jews are angry. And they have every right to be.\u201d<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

No, that is not the global emergency. The real emergency is a rampant anti-Palestinian racism that has utterly normalised genocide and been given institutional support across the West. It is anti-Palestinian racism, not \u201cantisemitism\u201d, that is the consequence of \u201ctwo years of turning a blind eye, taking the easy path and ignoring the warnings\u201d. Make no mistake: alongside the grief and the defiance, people with a conscience are angry at the two-year genocide endorsed by our governments. And they have every right to be.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is years of dedicated work by the Israel lobby that has ensured the mass murder of Palestinians is viewed by governments, the media and parts of the Jewish community as entirely legitimate.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":6420,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[7],"class_list":{"0":"post-6419","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-israel-lobby"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6419","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6419"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6419\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6423,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6419\/revisions\/6423"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6420"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6419"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6419"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jonathan-cook.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6419"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}