Editor’s note: This article is published in two parts.
Part I examines how the Bondi massacre was immediately weaponised for political advantage, and why claims of personal responsibility directed at Prime Minister Anthony Albanese collapse under scrutiny. Part II explores how the post-Bondi debate over antisemitism risks entrenching dangerous misdiagnoses that may make Jewish Australians less safe, not more.
Part I
The Lie Built on Graves
On Sunday evening, December 15, fifteen people celebrating Hanukkah at Sydney’s Bondi Beach were murdered in an ISIS inspired terrorist attack. The victims ranged from a ten-year-old girl to an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor. Also slain, is Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who organised the Chabad community event.
By Wednesday morning, Naveed Akram, 24, had been charged with 59 offences, including 15 counts of murder and terrorism. His father Sajid Akram, 50, who carried out the attack alongside him, was shot dead at the scene. Police later confirmed that Islamic State flags had been found in their vehicle.
The grief barely had time to settle before it was pressed into service.
It is worth being precise about what followed. Rabbi Schlanger was farewelled at a funeral held at the Chabad of Bondi synagogue, attended by NSW Premier Chris Minns and former prime minister Scott Morrison. The Prime Minister was not invited. Separately, a broader community and interfaith memorial was held in Bondi, to which Albanese was also not invited. He later attended a distinct interfaith service where he spoke alongside religious leaders. These distinctions matter, because the political narrative was constructed not around absence, but around the deliberate staging of presence.
Before the first funerals were held, senior Coalition figures began laying responsibility for the massacre at the feet of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. John Howard, pioneer of modern Australian dog whistle politics, emerged to lecture the nation on racial hatred. Scott Morrison appeared at memorial events, solemn and conspicuous. Opposition Leader Sussan Ley spoke darkly of government failure.
But it was former treasurer Josh Frydenberg who delivered the most incendiary line, declaring at a Bondi memorial gathering:
“It is time for him to accept personal responsibility for the death of 15 innocent people, including a 10-year-old child.”
This was not grief speaking. It was strategy.
The claim being advanced was simple and brutal. Had Albanese acted differently on antisemitism, had he implemented the full agenda of the government’s antisemitism envoy, these murders would not have occurred. Therefore, the blood was on his hands. Murdoch outlets amplified the message with enthusiasm.
This deserves to be called what it is: an outrageous lie wrapped in mourning clothes.
A timeline that refuses to cooperate
Sajid Akram arrived in Australia from India in 1998 on a student visa, during John Howard’s prime ministership. He later transitioned to a partner visa; then resident return visas. His son, Naveed, was born in Australia. Neither were on a terror watch list. Police confirm the pair travelled to the Philippines in November, raising serious questions about radicalisation pathways and intelligence blind spots.
The path that led to Bondi did not begin with Albanese. It began decades earlier, across a series of governments, and culminated in a catastrophic failure of detection and disruption by the very institutions designed to prevent mass casualty attacks.
That reality is inconvenient, because it demands scrutiny of intelligence agencies, policing systems, gun licensing regimes and online radicalisation ecosystems. So instead we are offered theatre.
Morrison attended Rabbi Schlanger’s funeral. Albanese was not invited. The message was clear enough for any political operative to decode. Judgment had been passed. Labor stood accused.
But whose judgment was this, and whose interests did it serve?
Albanese’s actual constraints
The PM’s response has been criticised as timid. In truth, it reflects the constitutional reality of the office.
Many of the measures being demanded by his critics are not merely controversial. Jillian Segal’s are constitutionally impossible without eviscerating principles of institutional independence and freedom of expression. Defunding universities for failing to meet a politicised definition of antisemitism, inserting an envoy into the oversight of public broadcasters, compelling ideological training of judges, are authoritarian measures dressed up as protection.
What Albanese has done is cherry-pick what is implementable while rejecting what is not. Segal attends education consultations but wields no defunding power. A Gonski led taskforce has been established to examine antisemitism across education sectors. Security funding for Jewish community sites has been extended. SBS will receive additional resources for social cohesion programming.
On the legal front, the government is pursuing hate crime reforms including enhanced penalties for threats and violence, national vilification consistency, and expanded capacity to list extremist organisations.
What none of these addresses is the central failure that made Bondi possible.
The questions that matter
How did two radicalised men amass multiple firearms legally? Why did a person previously investigated by ASIO retain access to long guns? How did the Akrams’ travel and online activity fail to trigger intervention? Why was a neo-Nazi rally approved outside Parliament weeks earlier, while resources for deradicalisation or advance protection of the Bondi Hanukah celebration remain threadbare?
These questions demand an inquiry. A royal commission into intelligence and security failures is not a political indulgence. It is the only serious response.
As Bernard Keane has argued, slogans about ideology do nothing to fix broken systems. Frydenberg’s line that “radical Islamist ideology pulled the trigger” is clever but empty. Ideology does not operate in a vacuum. It spreads through algorithmic amplification, grievance communities, and institutional neglect.
A deeper category error lies here. It matters. Increasingly, researchers and prevention agencies argue that violent extremism behaves less like a debate to be “won” and more like a social contagion that spreads through environments of grievance, isolation, algorithmic reinforcement and access to means.
In other words, it is not only a policing problem. It is a prevention problem, best tackled with the same logic public health uses for violence more broadly: early intervention, risk and protective factors, and harm reduction. The CDC’s public health approach to violence prevention offers the basic prevention framework, while work explicitly applying that lens to countering violent extremism is now mainstreamed in policy and research, from the U.S. National Institute of Justice to analyses of “complex contagion” dynamics in extremist spread.
But here? Crickets. And clearly, the opposition has little interest in examining these failures, because they implicate Coalition governments at both state and federal levels.
A serious response would look like this
- A royal commission into intelligence and security failures, examining why ASIO’s investigation of Naveed Akram failed to prevent the attack, how licensing systems allowed a person under intelligence scrutiny to legally acquire multiple firearms, and why coordination failed between federal and state agencies.
- An independent review of online radicalisation pathways, examining how ISIS and other extremist content bypasses platform moderation, how algorithms amplify radicalising material, and what regulatory frameworks could disrupt these pipelines without creating Orwellian surveillance.
- A genuine public health approach to deradicalisation, learning from programs in Europe and Southeast Asia that intervene with at risk individuals before violence occurs, providing alternative narratives and exit pathways from extremism.
- Honest engagement with the drivers of both antisemitism and Islamophobia in Australia, recognising that the same Coalition figures now demanding action on antisemitism spent years using anti-Muslim dog whistles for electoral advantage, teaching a generation of Australians that scapegoating religious minorities is politically acceptable.
But we are not getting any of this. Instead, we are getting partisan point scoring, with Howard blazing away.
A familiar political pattern
John Howard’s sudden concern about religious hatred would be comic if it were not obscene. This is the same leader who weaponised fear of Muslims during the Tampa crisis, who lied about desperate refugees throwing their children into the ocean, who used the Bali bombings to justify laws that disproportionately targeted Muslim communities.
Those instincts did not vanish. They normalised the idea that religious minorities could be treated as electoral threats. They taught Australians that scapegoating worked.
The Akrams did not emerge from nowhere. They were radicalised in a country where anti-Muslim rhetoric has been rendered politically acceptable over decades. That cultural groundwork is precisely what ISIS propaganda exploits.
For Howard to now pose as an elder statesman while ignoring his own role in cultivating grievance requires an astonishing capacity for self-delusion.
Bondi should have triggered a national reckoning about institutional failure. Instead, it has been repurposed as a weapon.
But that is only half the story.
Because alongside the blame game sits a second, more dangerous manoeuvre. The attempt to redefine antisemitism itself in ways that risk making Jewish Australians less safe, not more.
That is the argument you are not supposed to have.
This article was originally published on URBAN WRONSKI WRITES
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Great background information from David Tyler.
Al Jazeera has an article today that is connected to this from David —
Ideology does not operate in a vacuum. It spreads through algorithmic amplification, grievance communities, and institutional neglect.
We could add, “institutional attack” as a reason for the spread of ideologies, as we see in this from al Jazeera — The United States has issued a new round of sanctions against staff members at the International Criminal Court, citing a recent ruling blocking Israel’s effort to halt a Gaza war crimes investigation. Thursday’s sanctions target two judges: Gocha Lordkipanidze of Georgia and Erdenebalsuren Damdin of Mongolia.
The sanctions are the latest in a series of economic restrictions the administration of US President Donald Trump has placed on ICC members and their associates.
Critics warn such actions could chill investigations across the world and have wide-ranging implications for prosecutors, judges and even witnesses.
In February, for instance, the Trump administration issued broad sanctions targeting ICC staff and anyone assisting the court’s investigations against the US and its allies.
The Trump White House continued by issuing individual sanctions against judges and prosecutors it disagreed with.
In June, four judges were sanctioned, two of whom participated in probes regarding US personnel in Afghanistan. The other two were involved in the decision to issue arrest warrants for Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former Defence Minister Yoav Gallant.
Then, in August, the US expanded the sanctions, taking actions against two more judges and two ICC prosecutors.
Even entities outside the ICC have been hit with economic penalties as a result of their participation in its investigations.
https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/12/18/us-sanctions-more-icc-judges-citing-ruling-on-israeli-war-crime-probe
Watch this Youtube video from actor Mandy Patinkin. It’s 5 months old but very relevant.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFjOb9DGS1w
A source of great frustration to the man who would rule the world is that he doesn’t have the authority or the power to nominate the judges on the ICC as he does on his own Supreme Court, so he seeks to neuter the Court.
I am glad you pick out Frydenberg’s name. The Saturday Paper’s Martin McKenzie-Murray quotes him extensively in an article about Bondi, including his attack on Albanese and demand for pro-Palestinian protests to be stopped. Like you I think his intervention was political. What was interesting was the almost hysterical tone, the mis-characterising of pro-Palestine protests as anti-Semitic and a complete absence of any recognition of the connection to Israel’s genocide in Gaza.
Thank you Robert for that YouTube post. It is powerful and supports the view many of us have. Frydenberg could probably benefit from watching it.
I suspect our hapless PM has set himself up for this egregious ‘instrumentalising’ of Sunday’s IS-motivated terror attack on the Jewish community by his chronic failure to clarify the distinction between antisemitism and anti-Zionism, thereby permitting the conflation to consolidate and acculturate by default. Perhaps he figured it would all just politically pan out as usual – until an antisemitic massacre got in the way.
This is not about definitions but a dereliction that needs to be addressed as a matter of urgency. The Labor leadership ought to be able to walk and chew gum at the same time. There is no point talking about unity when disunity is partly a function of a government electing to cow-tow to the right-wing Jewish lobby instead of prioritising the the safety of multicultural Australian communities, many of whose constituents have escaped war-torn countries of origin (see David Tyler above, ‘A Serious Response Would Look Like This’).
While perhaps contentious, this distinction is critical in my view, and I believe the failure to articulate it in objective, non-political terms for the broader community has cleared the way for the ruthless politicking that defames ordinary Australians – including those protesting Netanyahu’s genocide – as ‘antisemitic’, thus setting in train certain inevitable, divisive, and possibly fatal consequences.
https://www.newyorker.com/news/q-and-a/is-anti-zionism-anti-semitism
https://theshot.net.au/uncategorized/weaponising-the-bondi-tragedy-is-a-betrayal-of-all-our-children/
One thing I really do not understand is Albo’s strange choice of people to head important agencies,advisories, etc. For example his choice of Brereton to head the ICAC and all the other Lieberals to staff it is very bizarre. His choice of Jillian Segal to head the antisemitism review is particularly bizarre considering she is the prime funder for Advance Australia, an extreme right wing lobby group, basically scum.
So come on Albo we don’t want you choosing mates like the Lieberals do but surely you can do better than this.
The appointment of David Gonski to head this taskforce to examine antisemitism across education sectors is not impartial, it taints the taskforce with a conflict of interest from the beginning, just as the appointment of Brereton to the NACC did in regard to Robodebt.
From Wendy Bacon and Yakov Aharon, August 19, 2025:
“The looming Combat Antisemitism Movement (CAM) summit is backed by an assortment of human rights advocates, astroturfers, property developers and Zionist agitators.
Two of the key participants at the CAM antisemitism summit on the Gold Coast, September 3–5, are Jillian Segal, the controversial Antisemitism Envoy, and businessman David Gonski, who co-chairs the committee running the event.”
they go on to say:
“Gonski has been the chancellor of the University of New South Wales (UNSW) for many years. He is less prominent in Zionist circles than some others involved in the summit, but is a strong supporter of investment in Israel.
Gonski and Segal are close. They have known each other since emigrating as children from 1960s Apartheid South Africa. Both were top students at UNSW Law School and were awarded alumni awards together. Gonski mentored Segal in the business world and then, as UNSW’s chancellor and deputy chancellor, respectively, for several years.”
https://www.greenleft.org.au/2025/1437/analysis/david-gonski-and-jillian-segal-head-israel-lobby-gold-coast-summit
Let’s not forget Albanese’s pick to chair the NACC, Paul Brereton, was a close friend of Kathryn Campbell of Robodebt infamy; how has that worked out so far?
Gongongche is nailing it.
We have a rare opportunity to parse and pore over this horror – and reflectively, as advised by Herb.
Citizen journalism at its best should be a force against self-serving war-mongering propaganda.
BTW I also thank Robert for posting that wonderful YouTube, which speaks for so many Jews and non-Jews alike.
I’m disgusted by Frydenberg’s intervention which is nothing more than to get his snout back in a very large trough, something that I was expecting by the way.
This is how self-righteous political indignation works
https://www.theage.com.au/politics/federal/frydenberg-s-bondi-address-wasn-t-an-audition-it-was-a-moral-accusation-20251219-p5noxp.html
Both Melbourne and Sydney are huge Jewish enclaves, fact not fiction.
Interesting post from Gonggongche.
The mafia would be more subtle, re subject.
Used in the US to split the Democrat vote, for whom the majority of Jewish vote for, on campuses.
Also to preclude any ceasefire agreement btw Biden & Netanyabu to stymy Harris’ electoral chances and with above, suppressing votes of many younger (by their choice).
Outcome three amigos Netanyahu, Trump and Putin….prevailing, for now…..
Milner & The Shot see evidence of transnational ‘architecture of influence’ of Heritage Foundation’s Project Esther; it’s been in the public domain in the US for 6 months…..
From the New York Times May ’25:
The Group Behind Project 2025 Has a Plan to Crush the Pro-Palestinian Movement. Even before President Trump was re-elected, the Heritage Foundation, best known for Project 2025, set out to destroy pro-Palestinian activism in the United States….
…..Concerns are encapsulated in the following:
‘But critics such as Mr. Jacoby say the think tank is exploiting real concerns about antisemitism to advance its broader agenda of radically reshaping higher education and crushing progressive movements more generally.
Project Esther exclusively focuses on antisemitism on the left, ignoring antisemitic harassment and violence from the right. It has drawn criticism from many Jewish organizations amid increasing calls for them to push back against the Trump administration.’
Great post, Andrew Smith.
Here is the official Project Esther vs ‘Progressivism’ on Heritage Foundation’s website
https://www.heritage.org/progressivism/report/project-esther-national-strategy-combat-antisemitism
Surely Fox Board’s Tony Abbott knows this as his Hungarian workplace the Danube Institute is partnered with Heritage Foundation; anti-EU, anti-Ukraine, Opus Dei with a whiff of eugenics and anti-semitism (see ‘Soros conspiracy’ dog whistle)?
When Heather, in the comments on this article, writes “Both Melbourne and Sydney are huge Jewish enclaves, fact not fiction”, she makes it sound as if the “fact” is somehow problematic or disturbing. What is disturbing is the unleashing of antisemitism in response to the Bondi massacre.
Like David Tyler, I disagree with Josh Frydenberg’s attack on Anthony Albanese (although I do think that Albanese is right to express the kind of contrition he has expressed).
But I disagree with Tyler’s general position on the nature of responsibility. Tyler seems to believe that if your conduct does not cause a particular event you do not have responsibility for that event. But I believe both that (1) the recent neo-Nazi rally outside the NSW Parliament did not cause the Bondi massacre and (2) that those who participated in the neo-Nazi rally have responsibility for this massacre. (They have responsibility because they stoked antisemitic hatred and antisemitic hatred fuelled the massacre.)
It goes without saying that I see no parallel between the neo-Nazis and Anthony Albanese.
@Alex Segal:
With respect, I think you are confusing correlation with causation here, thereby constructing a ‘straw man’.
I can’t find anything in David Tyler’s exposition suggesting a parallel between the neo-Nazis and Anthony Albanese that you could disagree with in the first place.
A ‘parallel’ – whether implicit or explicit – is not a cause but a rhetorical device that draws attention to similarities, where none have been made here that I can see.
Failure to act (or acts of omission), however, may play a correlational role in permitting the emergence of factors leading to an (negative) outcome or result. This is, I believe, where our collective responsibility and the Albanese government’s rests – such as for the “broken systems” referred to here.
Institutional derelictions and failures? Political knavery? Good people doing nothing, or not enough?
https://www.smh.com.au/national/a-father-a-son-and-the-radical-world-of-terror-20251218-p5nomv.html
Nothing I said implies that David Tyler sees a parallel between Anthony Albanese and the neoNazis. I do not believe for one moment that he holds such an idiotic view.
@Alex Segal:
My apologies for any misreading of your comment.
Maybe I’m jumping at shadows.
The antisemitic (goes without saying) neo-Nazi rallies should never have taken place. And I’m very concerned about the political rhetoric surrounding the still undefined nature of ‘antisemitism’ – again all over the media this morning. The unchecked attribution of this epithet to all and sundry such as implied by pressures to adopt Segal’s recommendations and state plans to limit protest and surveillance of dissidents is precisely what Netanyahu/the Jewish lobby wants (Australia is not Israel and Hamas is not ISIS) and may only herald the start of unconstitutional tampering with our democracy; it’s the thin edge of the wedge.
Representative democracies like ours should provide the best national security and state protections possible to keep its people safe but should not be ‘scapegoating’ the entire community for an IS-inspired terrorist attack under some weasly pretence that banning protests will somehow lesson the threats to our Jewish and non-Jewish communities.
Herbert’s use of the term “Jewish lobby” as a term of abuse is vile and antisemitic. It disturbs me that so few people on this blog call out this nasty discourse.
Yes of course I agree that both are antisemitic ‘organisations’.
Furthermore I am in no way suggesting that anti-semitism does not exist in the community beyond these nominated antisemitic/terror organisations but there are no indications so far at this time that there are any links with any organisations or persons other than the IS-radicalised individuals responsible for this appalling act of terror.
Indeed I do not think describing both organisations in this way is a specifically right wing thing to do at all, because these are established facts; what I am concerned about is the deployment of the term ‘antisemitism’ by Australian right wing political interests – Jewish and otherwise – as a catchall to defame and traduce critics of the right wing Israeli Coalition, its conduct of the war in Gaza, its war crimes, and so on.
Of course this is not to deny that terrible crimes have also been committed by Hamas.
Like so many others – and Robert’s YouTube is helpful here – despite not being Jewish or having an antisemitic bone in my body, any criticism by me of Julia Segal, for example, would be considered ‘antisemitic’, or if I demonstrated against the war in Gaza, I would also be branded as ‘antisemitic’, or I would be unable to protest at all as I am free to do in our democracy because…imminently proscribed.
And so it goes, dismayingly.
As to my reference to the ‘Jewish lobby’ as a term of abuse, this was not my intention, and you are merely proving my point by suggesting that it is.
Are you seriously suggesting that there are no right wing Jewish organisations in Australia?
Why on earth would you imagine I think there are no right wing Jewish organisations in Australia? I despise the AJA but I would never dream of saying scathingly that they are part of “the Jewish Lobby”.
I guess the fact that you do not even recognise the antisemitism of your discourse indicates what an incredibly bleak place we are in. I very much hope that people would recognise that, for example, to speak of “the Homosexual Lobby” in the way you speak of “the Jewish Lobby” involves vile homophobia.
Herbert’s use of the term “Jewish lobby” as a term of abuse is vile and antisemitic.
Alex, I think you’re being unnecessarily harsh on Herbert.
If Heather believes that Josh Frydenberg is exploiting votes by cynically redirecting people’s grief, then she should provide evidence to support this attribution of extraordinary evil to the man. But she does not provide a shred of evidence. My strong impression (which may well be mistaken) is that his grief and pain had clouded his judgment. His grief and pain seem to me quite genuine. I was stunned by the way Sarah Ferguson called his sincerity into question (I know that in a sense she was just doing her job, but surely there are times when a bit of decency is in order). At a very bleak time for Jewish people, Heather uses ugly animal imagery to characterise a Jewish man in pain – animal imagery of the kind that has been used for centuries to dehumanise Jews and incite violence against them. I find it shocking that a comment as vile as Heather’s is regarded as acceptable.
The sentence you took issue with was “Both Melbourne and Sydney are huge Jewish enclaves, fact not fiction.” not Josh Frydenberg, so before we get misdirected here. You then projected onto her that she was inferring that a huge Jewish enclave was problematic or disturbing; nothing about Josh Frydenberg.
What was your evidence for projecting that onto Heather?
But in the comment of yours to which I was responding, you ascribe to Heather an interpretation of Frydenberg the content of which is highly problematic but which you treat as unproblematic. What you said cried out for a response. So I don’t think I was doing anything unreasonable in addressing this shocking issue first. My plan is to address the other issues in future comments. But it is pretty late here so this will have to wait until tomorrow.
Can we take it that the fact that you didn’t produce any evidence for projecting that onto Heather, that you had none? That you chose to project the worst possible connotation so as to smear her?
As for your attack on Herbert for saying that the Albanese government had elected to kow tow to “the right wing Jewish lobby” you said: ‘Herbert’s use of the term “Jewish lobby” as a term of abuse is vile and antisemitic.’
From MWM:
‘Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the IHRA definition, has cautioned against its use as a disciplinary tool. Stern has repeatedly said the definition was never intended to “target or chill speech”.
“Starting in 2010, right-wing Jewish groups took the “working definition”, which had some examples about Israel … and decided to weaponise it with title VI cases,” Stern wrote in a Guardian op-ed.’
https://michaelwest.com.au/albo-bows-to-media-israel-pressure-moves-on-protests-antisemitism-free-speech/
Does that mean that according to you Kenneth Stern, the lead drafter of the IHRA definition of antisemitism is “vile and antisemitic.”?
The fact that Stern criticises particular Jewish lobby groups no more makes him antisemitic than the fact that I am very critical of the Australian Jewish Association makes me antisemitic.
In the case of the interpretation of Heather I present, I simply took my cue from the interpretation you had provided. I should have used quotation marks to indicate that I was quoting you. I cannot think of a better interpretation. Can you?
It is absurd to accuse me of smearing her.
I don’t believe Herbert was even criticising the right wing Jewish lobby (if such a body exists) but rather his criticism was towards the Albanese government for kow towing to pressure.
Yet you chose to label Herbert vile and antisemitic and here you say you wouldn’t do that to Kenneth Stern, despite him being critical and using virtually the same language, how does that work?
Were you projecting the worst connotation possible onto Herbert, as it appears you did to Heather, to smear him as well?
Well, you haven’t provided evidence for projecting that she was inferring that a huge Jewish enclave was problematic or disturbing onto her, which you followed with “What is disturbing is the unleashing of antisemitism in response to the Bondi massacre.”
Isn’t that projection that a large population of any group is problematic or disturbing a smear? and then when juxtaposed with talk of unleashing antisemitism a further smear.
Alex Segel, as I said, I commend you for calling out antisemitism when you think you see it, but along with that comes the responsibility to right any wrongdoing if you end up throwing ‘vile’ and ‘antisemitic’ about willy nilly and get it wrong. Wouldn’t you agree that you should apologize in that case?
Has anyone asked Alex what he thinks of Gaza events yet?
An excellent article David, and great follow-on by SD, but
Wow.
In this fragile era, where US T-Rumpian brutal stupidity brings forward the appalling policy “2025 National Security Strategy” including the revitalization of ‘Monroe Doctrine’, supremacist ideals, much like the ‘Zionist Manifesto’ and Netanyahu’s Likud coalition, all hinged on arcane self-serving religious dogma, and notions of inevitable winners and losers (or conversions), everyone gets to be afraid and reactive.
Like the ‘westerners’ and their ‘opponents’ world-over the ensuing comments move into a “Yes but”, “What if”, and conflations and misreadings. This is what happens community-wide, ducking and weaving around brands and labels and affiliations, and ‘cultural correctness’. And it could be said it’s an inevitable result of the objectives and m.o. of political pronouncements – a haze around reality. A haze that a majority abdicate themselves to.
I’m not all surprised Albo was booed at the ‘vigil’. For reasons, valid, invalid, good, bad – a mess. The divisiveness of today’s opportunistic politics (here in Oz as elsewhere) = ‘invalid’ & ‘bad’. Albo needs to boot Burgess’ arse. Action (being taken) & as needs must, have a national Royal Commission only into fed/state intelligence/policing.
I am surprised at hearing Albo will accept / integrate the IHRA definition of anti-Semitism – a big mistake I think.
However, I remind myself that aside from Labor’s Palestine Policy, Albo must strain under Labor’s history with Jews and Israel and Palestine via ‘Doc’ Evatt (a Labor foreign affairs Minister). Evatt, a founding force behind the UN and chair of the committee on ‘the Palestine question’ where he pushed for ‘partition’ (without consultation with Palestinians), and two days later, whilst President of the UNGA gained approval for ‘Partition’ from the majority of members.
Meanwhile back in Oz, Arthur Calwell who needed $$ (for an election Labor might lose), and had significant contact with Melbourne’s large (refugee and other) Jewish community, lobbied them hard for backing (which came substantially). And later, Calwell tapped Evatt (a pro-Zionist) to pursue funding via his Jewish friends in Sydney. The funding came to pass (despite that, Labor soon lost), yet the funding continued as a most substantial stream of donation for many years. Just where that’s at today, I don’t know.
The whole caboodle is a mess on all sides of Oz politics, just like it is in Europe and America where there is a distinct flow-on to the Middle East and elsewhere. There seems to be a penchant for regression, and a check on ‘Zugzwang’ before moving on.
I guess too many people are hurting right now and distress takes many forms.
Beethoven was in great suffering and turmoil with his approaching deafness and rage at Napoleon’s bombardment and siege of Vienna in 1809.
Yet he somehow managed to compose this (Adagio movement from the Emperor Concerto below):
https://music.youtube.com/watch?v=XVE6OBS3DY4&si=KrVmJJ90LCcmnQLH
A safe and peaceful yuletide to the AIM and with thanks again for a voice (and occasionally an ear!).
Herbert