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Yesterday, a father and son targeted a Jewish community celebrating the first night of Hanukkah in Bondi Beach, Australia, killing at least 15 people. It’s a horrifying escalation in the latest wave of antisemitic violence worldwide, and we should all be united in grief and outrage.
But instead of coming together to condemn this violence, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed Australia’s Prime Minister for mass murder because Australia recognized Palestinian statehood.
This makes things far worse, not better, and it’s part of an alarming pattern. Time to log on.
Trump and Netanyahu Use the Same Playbook
Here’s how it works:
Something horrible happens.
Blame your political enemies — erroneously.
Intentionally manipulate legitimate criticism as hatred.
Use people’s fear to grab more power.
Rinse and repeat.
It’s what Trump does every time (hello Charlie Kirk assassination). It’s what Netanyahu does every time. They’re both fascists, and they’re reading from the same script.
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Stop Conflating Pro-Palestine with Antisemitic
Antisemitism is real. It’s spreading and we need to fight it at every turn. The problem is that every time someone says that supporting Palestinians is the same as hating Jewish people, they make things worse. They make it harder to spot actual antisemitism and they push away people who could be allies, giving the real bigots more room to hide.
Supporting a Palestinian state is not antisemitic. Criticizing Israel’s government is not antisemitic. Attacking Jewish people is antisemitic. So when leaders like Netanyahu use antisemitism as a political tool instead of the very real threat that it is, they don’t protect Jewish people. They literally put them in harm’s way.
The Hero Netanyahu Would Have Killed
The man who tackled the shooter was Ahmed al-Ahmed. A true hero who risked his life to save Jewish lives. And yet, Ahmed is everything that Netanyahu rails against. Netanyahu initially thought Ahmed was Jewish, praising him as the “pinnacle of Jewish heroism.” The irony of this statement, while also running a government that has killed tens of thousands of people who look like Ahmed, is wild. Had Ahmed been in the U.S., Trump would have had him kidnapped by ICE based on nothing more than his skin color and what’s in his passport. These losers wouldn’t have hesitated to destroy this hero. They do it every day to people just like him.
That’s bigotry in its rawest form. When you hate entire groups of people, you can’t see that Ahmed al-Ahmed might risk his life to save Jewish lives. You can’t see the allies standing right next to you because you’re too busy believing your own propaganda about who deserves to live and who deserves to die.
We’re All Safer Together, Or We’re All At Risk
Real safety means everyone is safe. Not just some people or at someone else’s expense.
You can’t protect Jewish communities by attacking Palestinians. You can’t fight antisemitism by spreading Islamophobia. You can’t make anyone safer by dividing people and making them hate each other. It doesn’t work and it never has. Real safety comes from standing together and refusing to let politicians use our fear to grab power.
What Fighting Antisemitism Actually Looks Like
If we actually want to fight antisemitism, here’s what we need to do:
Call it out. Immediately. No equivocating. Antisemitism is always wrong.
Stop obfuscating. If opposing the oppression and killing of Palestinians isn’t anti-Jewish, that would mean that their oppression and killing are Jewish — which is false and offensive. Many Jewish people believe that supporting Palestinian liberation is core to their Jewish values, in fact. Others disagree. But conflating antisemitism with peace efforts is not only wrong, it’s dangerous.
Build alliances. Ahmed al-Ahmed understood something bigots never will: we’re all in this together. Our safety is connected.
When politicians use tragedy as a political weapon, call them out. Loudly.
Don’t fall for the playbook. Don’t let fascists control the conversation or set the terms of debate. The attack at Bondi Beach should bring us together against hate, all hate. Antisemitism is real. Islamophobia is real. And the politicians who benefit when we fight each other are counting on us to stay divided, to stay scared, to turn on each other instead of holding them accountable.
Ahmed al-Ahmed showed us a different way yesterday. He showed us what real courage and real solidarity looks like. He showed us that the people these fascist leaders tell us to fear are often the same people willing to risk everything to protect us.
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