Ilan Preskovsky: The Bondi Beach Massacre - a warning ignored, a tragedy foretold

Key topics:Bondi Beach attack killed 15, including a Holocaust survivor and rabbis.Surge in Australian antisemitism fuelled by anti-Zionist rhetoric post-October 7.Heroic Muslim citizen disarmed attacker, highlighting need to separate Islam from jihadism..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox at 5:30am weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa’s bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..By Ilan Preskovsky.The horrific terror attack against Jews celebrating the first night of Chanukah at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia on Sunday was as shocking as it was unsurprising. Shocking, as it left fifteen dead, including a Holocaust survivor, two rabbis, and a ten-year-old girl, and dozens more badly injured; unsurprising, because it’s exactly where the surge of antisemitic incidents that have plagued the city and the country over the past two years inevitably leads: the slaughter of Jews. It’s also worth mentioning that this hits particularly close to home, as Sydney hosts a great many South African expats and one of the victims was Rabbi Yaakov Levitan, who was born and raised in Johannesburg, attended King David Linksfield, and obtained a business degree from UNISA. A Grim InevitabilityWhen Jew-hatred seemingly instantaneously erupted around the globe in the immediate wake of Hamas’ barbaric invasion of Israel on 7 October 2023, it was major Western cities like Sydney that felt it most. Literally, just two days after the massacre, when Israel was still fighting for its life against thousands of terrorists who were running rampant across the south of the country, a thousand protesters gathered outside the historic Sydney Opera House, which was lit up in blue and white in solidarity with Israel, not to protest the worst terror attack in Israel’s history, but to protest against Israel..Read more:.Terror attack at Bondi Beach kills Hanukkah celebrants.There has been some controversy over whether the phrase “gas the Jews” was actually uttered at these protests or just “where are the Jews” or “fuck the Jews” and whether the phrase that was heard at some smaller protests in other parts of Sydney the day before had been misattributed to this larger protest. I mean, yay for journalistic integrity, but honestly, who gives a damn? Whether these protesters were justifying the attack as “resistance” or simply using it as an excuse to indulge their previously hidden hatred for Jews, the result was the same: the spark had been lit and anti-Jewish hatred exploded across Australia. Not that the country had been free of antisemitism before October 7, but this was something else entirely. It was out in the open. It was loud and it was proud.This was not about caring about Palestinians. This was not about disapproving of the IDF’s actions in the war in Gaza or about criticism of the Israeli government. This was about the revival of the “world’s oldest hatred” and about finding a socially acceptable cause to give it a new veneer of legitimacy. It is what “from the river to the sea” always meant and what “globalizing the intifada” always called for. So, after two years of arson attacks against synagogues, medical professionals outright threatening to murder Israeli patients, the fire-bombing of a children’s daycare, the torching of Jewish businesses and more individual acts of antisemitic vandalism and violence than you can count, how could it end up anywhere but where it did? After two years of constant demonization of the Jewish State and whitewashing antisemitism as “only anti-Zionism”, how could the massacre on Bondi Beach feel anything but grimly inevitable - even for a country whose incredibly strict gun laws have prevented anything of this magnitude having happened in decades? And as Australian officials have repeatedly failed to take the threat of antisemitism seriously, how can anyone be surprised that it was on Australian soil that the largest massacre of Jews since October 7th took place? The big, non-rhetorical question, then, is where to from here? Are there lessons to be learned from this latest massacre of Jews that might prevent more of the same from happening? Will this be different from the antisemitic murders in Washington, Paris, or Manchester, let alone those in southern Israel, that only led to more antisemitism, not less?Call me a hopeless optimist, but maybe, just maybe this grotesque display of pure, violent Jew-hatred will serve as a “rock bottom” moment for the entire liberal-democratic order, that will have no choice but to face its suicidal trajectory. Because, as the late Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks, of blessed memory, so succinctly put it: the hate that starts with the Jews never ends with the Jews.A Time of ReckoningIt may be the lowest bar imaginable, but it was a genuine relief to see the media coverage of the Bondi massacre skip the usual milquetoast generalisations and evasiveness that have so often met antisemitic incidents over the past two years, and called it precisely what it was: the targeted murder of Jews for being Jews. There were fewer attempts at trying to put it in the context of the Gaza War and there has even been some admission that anti-Zionist rhetoric had resulted in an explosion of violence against Jews.It was also, however, an occasion where another narrative showed signs of slowly starting to unravel. Or, at least, two duelling narratives that have always been intertwined: that of Islam and the hatred of Muslims, and that of radical Islamism and Jihadism – and the way that the rather nebulous term “Islamophobia” relates to both of them.On the one hand, we have the Islamophobia that is, very simply, about the hatred of Muslims: an open bigotry that clearly has no place in any society. Those who are guilty of this form of Islamophobia had their assumptions challenged, even undermined on Sunday by the fact that a 42-year-old Syrian immigrant heroically disarmed one of the terrorists, bare-handed, and was shot (thank God, not fatally) for his efforts. It was quite something to see Islamophobes on social media tie themselves into knots trying to prove that, actually, Ahmed al Ahmed was not Muslim, but was actually a Christian Australian by the name of Wesley Worthington III. Or something. Just wait until they find out about all the other times that Jews were saved from Jihadists by Muslims, or how it is Muslims that are actually persecuted the most by Jihadism.On the other hand, “Islamophobia” is frequently used to shut down any criticisms of Islamism and the elements of Islam that fundamentalists use to justify their bigoted behaviour. This has been catastrophic in its own way, as it has resulted in everything from excusing Jihadi terrorism to infantilizing Muslims to refusing to acknowledge the very real enemy in our midst. It has allowed radical Islamists to import their poisonous ideology into liberal-democratic countries and been used to brand anyone who objects to this as “Islamophobic”. .Read more:.The Economist: After the Bondi massacre, Australia faces hard questions about extremism.Many well meaning people employ the use of the latter version of “Islamophobia” to clamp down on the former, but this heinous terror attack, committed by a father and son who were allegedly inspired” by ISIS, proves that not only can the two be separated, but that they absolutely must be separated - for the sake of Muslims and non-Muslims alike. How, after all, can we possibly confuse the Muslim who risked his own life to save others – even others with whom he may well have several disagreements – with the radical Islamists who risk their own lives to murder others?We have to be able to say with emphatic clarity that Jihadism and radical Islamism are evil without implicating peaceful Muslims. We have to be able to criticize Israel without demonizing it and its people, or denying it, alone out of all the countries in the world, the right to exist. We have to differentiate between freedom of speech and harassment and incitement to violence; the right to opine on an unquestionably difficult situation in the Middle East without indoctrinating an entire generation into hatred of Jews. Our entire world order – or at least the good, honourable parts of it - depends on it. May this unspeakably awful act of anti-Jewish terrorism be the wake up call the world so desperately needs.

Ilan Preskovsky: The Bondi Beach Massacre - a warning ignored, a tragedy foretold

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