Albanese claimed that Australia’s recognizing of a fictitious Palestinian state didn’t encourage the Jew-slaughter.
As the world is shocked by the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre, and as experts pontificate about fighting abstractions like “hate,” too many ignore the most effective move Australia – and other countries – can make.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese should say: “Palestinian terrorists and their supporters keep trying to advance the Palestinian cause by slaughtering innocents, Jews and non-Jews alike. Today, rather than impotently claiming ‘terrorism doesn’t work,’ we will prove it with one action. Terrorism doesn’t work – it backfires: Australia hereby rescinds its recognition of a Palestinian state.”
Instead, after two antisemitic anti-Zionists murdered 15 innocents and wounded dozens, Albanese guaranteed that the problem won’t end; he claimed that Australia’s recognizing of a fictitious Palestinian state didn’t encourage the Jew-slaughter.
Such head-in-the-sand thinking is like denying the link between Hitler’s Mein Kampf and the Holocaust. Mein Kampf wasn’t just a bestseller, and Australia’s pro-Palestinian stance isn’t just a policy. Since the 1970s, the world has repeatedly rewarded Palestinian terrorism by advancing the Palestinian cause. Since Hamas’s unspeakable barbarism on October 7, it’s become super-trendy to enable terror and greenlight Jew-hatred.
When terrorism is rewarded
Ghazi Hamad, a Qatari-based Hamas leader whom Western useful idiots deemed “pragmatic,” called Australia and other countries recognizing a Palestinian state one of the “fruits of October 7.”
Hamas celebrated the recognition as an “important step” and a “deserved outcome of our people’s struggle.”
Terrorists aren’t stupid. Western leaders claim “terrorism never works,” yet their appeasement and cowardice spur more violence. That’s why since 2000, over 106,000 terrorist attacks worldwide have murdered 249,941 people. Since October 7, 8,670 terrorist attacks – including stone-throwing – occurred in Judea and Samaria.
There’s a fine line between exploiting a tragedy for political reasons and disincentivizing terrorism. But Bondi Beach wasn’t some natural disaster.
It was an unnatural aberration, perpetrated by monsters and fed by a monstrous anti-Zionist ideology blurring support for a Palestinian state, traditional Jew-hatred, and a desire to eliminate the Jewish state. Just because this anti-Zionist antisemitism gets traction in reaction to Israeli actions or leaders, it’s still motivated by a fury that Israel is – not what Israel does.
The logic is clear. Terrorism is politically motivated violence. Punishing the political cause discourages the terrorists. That’s why the way to stop antisemitic terrorism is to rescind recognition of the Palestinian state and encourage Palestinian civil society.
Bondi Beach should challenge the Jewish world too. Jews in countries emboldening terrorists by recognizing this bound-to-be-undemocratic Palestinian state must ask: have we truly shouted our displeasure, pressured our leaders, and shown the kind of spine we want Albanese and others to grow?
For decades, Jews’ accommodation politics worked in Australia, Great Britain, and Canada. But as their governments turn on Israel, communities there must master a new politics of confrontation – understanding that fighting against antisemitism and for Israel is a fight for true liberal democracy and the West’s soul.
Second, everyone must ask: are we raising our children to have the courage, grit, and strength demonstrated by Ahmed al-Ahmed, the fruit vendor turned hero who tackled a terrorist?
Israeli parents can answer “yes.” Can others? If not, why? Many should stop raising their kids to fit in and start teaching them to stand up, strong and tall, for others, including their own. They need a new conception – and new parenting guides – understanding that a strong sense of particular identity, including loyalty to your people, actually is the best way to create rooted, grounded, civic heroes who are gutsy and self-sacrificing.
Finally, beware of the conversational winds shifting in New York, as Jews risk catching Stockholm Syndrome, accepting Zohran Mamdani, who is still campaigning to be America’s leading anti-Zionist antisemite. Yes, Bondi Beach proves again how antisemitic anti-Zionists are, how the Palestinian national movement has intertwined the two, and how the burden of proof is on anti-Zionists – not Jews – to prove they aren’t Jew-haters.
No, I don’t agree that Mamdani “understood the fissures of our community better than we ourselves did” – why give him such credit? That’s not what happened. Does anyone believe anti-Zionist Jews went woke because American Jews don’t criticize Israel enough?
Bibi-bashing has long been a favorite sport among American Jews. Moreover, although Google AI notes that “prominent American Jews have been criticizing Zionism and Israel since before the state was founded in 1948,” for 30 years, at least, American Jews have been “hugging and wrestling” with Israel – a phrase coined in 2004, eight years after the radical Israel-bashing group, Jewish Voice for Peace, was founded.
Perhaps, rather than rabbis blaming Israel for the Jews’ alienation from Judaism and the Jewish state, we should re-examine how rabbis – and parents – teach about Israel, Zionism, and Judaism. Do they view Israel through the B-B-B – Bibi-bashing partisan lens – rather than the B to B … Bible to Birthright identity-building lens?
Have they taught Jews to recognize their true enemies, even if they’re perfumed with human rights talk or masked by Mamdani-style high-flying rhetoric? Can they distinguish between those who criticize what Israel does and those who reject that Israel is?
It’s no coincidence that a disproportionate number of the young Jews leading Hillel proudly today – and much of the Jewish community – are day school graduates. They lead not because they’re programmed to be mindless, pro-Israel right-wingers but because they’re educated to be thoughtful, nuanced, caring Jews, who recognize how central Israel is to their Jewish identity and our Jewish future.
It’s too easy to blame Israel for letting Jews down; sadly, too many Jews have let Israel down.