Racist violence was not introduced to Australia by recent migrants.
It is woven into the nation’s foundations.
Australia is a violent imperialist state, built on the massacre and dispossession of Indigenous peoples, and any honest reckoning with contemporary violence must begin there.
After the antisemitic attack on Jewish Australians at Bondi Beach, we have the option to refuse the false choice being offered to us: that we must either stand against antisemitism or oppose Israel’s genocide of the Palestinian people.
These positions are not contradictory.
They are inseparable.
Both arise from the same moral root: a rejection of injustice in all its forms.
Both reject violence against innocent people because of who they are.
Both insist that all human life carries equal and inherent worth.
Those who use this atrocity to justify further violence against Palestinians do not oppose violence at all.
They merely object to violence when it is inflicted on people they recognize as human.
If the Israeli army killed fifteen Palestinian civilians, it would be considered an unremarkable day in Gaza—met with silence, indifference, or a footnote, if it were reported at all.
It is the scale of Israel’s crimes over the past two years, and the open complicity of governments like Australia’s, that has created the conditions in which terror thrives.
The world has watched as children and families are killed daily, as homes and tents are bombed, as nearly two million people are deliberately starved. Journalists and doctors have been targeted.
Aid seekers have been shot.
Gaza has been made deliberately unlivable.
And yet, some of the world’s least principled actors rushed forward almost immediately, claiming to know why the Bondi attack occurred and drawing political conclusions before the facts were even established.
Their goal was clear: to link antisemitic violence to support for Palestine.
If it does emerge that the attacker was motivated by rage at Israel’s actions, then these same opportunists will have helped make real one of the deepest fears many Jewish people hold—that they will be made to pay for the crimes of a state and leaders they do not control, like Benjamin Netanyahu.
The assertion that Israel is committing ethnic cleansing is itself a subject of significant international debate, with many experts, human rights organisations, and UN bodies concluding that such acts are occurring, while Israel and its supporters vehemently deny these claims.
This is not a moment for cynical political positioning or moral grandstanding.
It is a moment for unity rooted in justice.
Unity does not mean silence, nor does it mean abandoning the oppressed.
It means acting with integrity, supporting investigations, and refusing to let tragedy be weaponized to excuse further bloodshed.
That Sunday night at Bondi, we saw courage.
We saw kindness and compassion.
We saw Australians reaching across faiths and backgrounds to protect one another.
Among them was Ahmed al-Ahmed, a Syrian-born Muslim, the son of a refugee, who risked his life to save Jewish Australians and was gravely injured in doing so.
His actions embodied what solidarity truly looks like.
No cause on earth can ever justify the slaughter of unarmed civilians.
Whatever was in the minds of the attackers, the only force they served was hate—and hate is the only thing their actions advanced.
Among the victims were a ten-year-old girl and a Holocaust survivor.
Their lives are not symbols.
They are irreplaceable.
There are two people responsible for this attack.
One is dead.
One is under arrest.
Let us not allow political agendas to distract from that truth.
And finally, remember this: there are always two sides.
One seeks to end our world’s addiction to hatred, violence, and needless bloodshed, to stay informed and hold an informed opinion.
The other seeks to either justify or lay blame after every tragedy, believe everything we see/hear on mainstream media and perpetuate untruths.
History will remember which side we chose.
