There are fresh bloodstains upon our history and upon the hands of those who fuel anti-semitism and racism in Australia and elsewhere.
The blood spilt may prove to be solely Jewish blood but make no mistake, we all share the DNA of a common humanity. The atrocity upon our Jewish brethren came mere days after the anniversary of the notorious Cronulla Riots.
Murder upon one of us, simply because of a professed faith, is a murder upon us all, surely. The ghosts of the past walk amongst us. History walks amongst us, sometimes an unwelcome stranger lurking in our midst, not always in plain sight.
The flame of history needs to be tended and kept alive. And yes, we ignore the past to our peril. The statement below by the Melbourne Holocaust Museum is a a salient reminder of the important role played by custodians of history and those who bear witness and provide testimony.
Formerly known as the Jewish Holocaust Centre, it was there that I first came to understand the important role of Yorta Yorta indigenous leader and activist William Cooper, founding secretary of the Australian Aborigines’ League who led a march to the German Consulate in Melbourne in December 1938 to protest the “cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi Government in Germany.”
It was there too, that I first met a beloved mentor and confidante, Shmeul Rosenkranz, a longtime President of the JHC whose wise counsel I still miss, including his advice to be unafraid of going against one’s tribe when reporting injustice and committing to be a witness – and never to be a mere “bystander.”
Tess Lawrence is a broadcaster, journalist advocate and specialist in ethical media services and crisis management and consultant in media strategy. She has taught at a number of institutions, including Deakin University in ethics and new reporting and is a forensic researcher and analyst.
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It is, to say the least, unfortunate that the coalition in opposition have chosen a political attack on Anthony Albanese and the Labor government – they insist that migration is out of control under Labor yet they avoid acknowledging that the shooters were not migrants in the terms of their argument. The older man, Sajid Akram came to Australia from Pakistan on a student visa in 1998, later converted to permanent residency. The younger, his son was identified as Naveed Akram and was born in Australia.
The hero of the day was Ahmed Al Ahmed who was born and raised in Syria’s Idlib region before migrating to Australia in 2006.
We are a nation of migrants, I’m a migrant and I dare say many readers are migrants or the sons and daughters of migrants. That is not the point and Sussan Ley should be ashamed of herself for hopping on the One Nation bus and fostering fear and hatred towards migrants.
One further observation, I noted some mourners at Bondi draping themselves in the flag of Israel: not a good look in my view, this is Australia, we are Australians!
PS: ‘The blood spilt may prove to be solely Jewish blood …….‘The blood of the brave Ahmed Al Ahmed is mingled with that Jewish blood!
Terry, great comment.
In regard to the flags you mentioned, I noticed a photo yesterday that showed an Israeli flag, but not easy to find today.
The wearing of the Israeli flag is possibly an unconscious admission that it is accepted by the Jewish community that the attack was not motivated by ethnicity, but by politics.
Steve, your last paragraph summed the situation up perfectly!
Robert, yesterday I saw one of the photos Terry referred to and it worried me.
Tried to find it today without success.
Did a search, noticed that others had put the same request into the search engine, but still no luck.
I decided I could not comment without evidence, so gave up as it was not worth devoting hours to. Then I chanced upon Terry’s comment.
The disappearance of the photos could mean that narrative control has taken over, or it could mean that I’m a terrible researcher! 🙂
These are some of the images captured by the Guardian:
https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/gallery/2025/dec/15/bondi-beach-shooting-terror-attack-in-pictures-ntwnfb
Spilt blood includes the two NSW policemen who were shot, along with retired policeman Peter Meagher, as well as the Syrian hero.
As far as Steve’s closing observation, re. disappearance of photos, I doubt that it’s a case of narrative control. Google ‘Bondi massacre today’, click on Images, and there are many pics of mourners draped in the Israeli flag.
On that matter I disagree with Terry Mills entirely; yes, this is Australia, yes, we are Australians, but these were Jewish people under attack and for them in their grief their Jewishness is the paramount issue as is their identification with Jewishness at large being threatened. Utterly understandable that they’d drape that symbol of Jewishness around their bodies.
Thanks Terry and Kanga.
There is narrative control taking place however.
The loudest voiced are making this to be about religion and ethnicity.
We will not know the actual motive until the remaining gunman gives evidence, but my money would be on a political motive.
Lets not kid ourselves, there has been generations of animosity between the Israeli and Palestinian people and on both side they have relations and friends scattered around the world. Sadly, very sadly, there are people who take this animosity to extremes, why? I doubt any one really knows, drugs, alcohol, mental illness or loss of family or friends at the hand of the otherside.
This is not about gun laws,or even religion, this is a cultural issue and all the gun laws, and public wailing will do nothing to stop it.
Both the media and our politicians are going to have to change their constant adversarial dialogue that divides the nation.
Canguro
You have probably noticed that whenever supporters of Palestine adopt the Palestinian flag they are roundly criticised, considered divisive and in some cases people are arrested for displaying it. For Palestinians and their supporters, the flag is a potent symbol of national identity, pride, culture, and the legitimate struggle for self-determination and resistance against occupation.
Flags are national symbols and I repeat, this is Australia and we are Australian, the Israeli flag and that of Palestine have no place in our society.
That’s just my view!
With all due respect to Tess Lawrence, occasionally even well-meaning heartfelt rhetoric can create misunderstanding and division.
Anti-Zionism and antisemitism continue to be conflated both in ignorance and in service to politics, and here the conflation is served up as the main rhetorical dish on Australia’s Israel appeasement menu. This suits war criminal Mr N as he can lie with impunity about anti-semitism as the cause of a genocidal war perpetrated by him and his right-wing Likud Coalition.
The failure by our own Zionist lobby-captive govt to educate the community with regard to this distinction can only blind us to similarities between the institutional and national security failures leading up to the Lindt-cafe siege and what will soon be revealed here as similar sequential failures identifiable as the necessary and sufficient conditions for this terrorist attack.
If we are unable to make these distinctions, history can only repeat itself.
Whilst clearly nothing was learned from prior preventable mass shootings whether terrorist-inspired or not nor, one thing is certain: the evidence is mounting for the usual mix of opportunistic conditions to have accrued – national security failures, prior warnings from the Jewish community, even the Jewish community’s own security failures (redolent of Israel’s various own-goal national security failures prior to the Oct 7 attacks) – sufficient to pave the way for this horrendous terror attack on our Australian Jewish community to take place.
Evidence is also steadily mounting that the antisemitism of which Mr Albanese is accused of insufficiently curbing in Oz by the war criminal Mr N is an intentionally distracting furphy; the terrorist attack on Bondi beach was carried out by ISIS-radicalised Muslim foot-soldiers recruited to fight wars between theocratic states beyond Australia, whether on Australian soil or not.
https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/sydneys-bondi-beach-shooter-naveed-akram-was-probed-for-isis-links-6-years-ago-report-9810316
If you have the stomach for it, one only has to view various extended SMH/Ch9 video footage of the shooters on the bridge published today to conclude that these men – father and son – were planning to die as martyrs together. Thus one can only conclude that this was a long-planned military-style terrorist attack having nothing whatsoever to do with community racism and antisemitism as is being propagandised by various stakeholders for political purposes.
One can only hope that Mr A is able to bone up and hold his ground against Mr N.
Terry, with all due respect, and conceding most of what you have to say as relevant, I’d toss in a final ‘whaddabouthis’ poser. Australia has many ethnic community social clubs, as I’m sure you’d be aware. Membership and patronage is likely restricted to the specific ethnicity that each club caters for. London to a brick that each club will have its national flag on display, but no Australian flag.
It’s convenient for immigrants to say that they are Australian and more so if they have naturalised, but blood roots run deep and at heart they will always be European, Middle Eastern, South American, Indian, Filipino, Chinese and so on.
Herbert, A good analysis – it has now come to light the shooters went to a militant training camp in the Philippines recently and that they adhere to IS ideologies – they also had IS banners in their car which they didn’t get a chance to wave.
Canguro, your points are well made, thankyou. The Barmy Army are a case
in point !!
The whole business has been a mess for a millennia+. All sides have been mind-blown.
Apologies, I cannot help but include a lengthy comment I made in response to Bert’s article:
… I add some more grist for the mill:
Labor’s ‘Doc’ Evatt helped establish the UN and headed the UN commission on the ‘Palestinian Question’ where he stridently backed the partition. Two days later as President of the UNGA, they ratified the partition of Palestine (without consulting Palestinians). After that both he and Arthur Calwell elicited massive donations from Melbourne Jews and later Sydney Jews in an effort to maintain / win govt. The fundraising and donations by the Jewish community to Labor remain substantial up to recently.
Even so, for years Labor has had a policy of support for Palestine, as have many Jews, eg: Jewish Council of Australia.
From ‘Rome I’ through to the ‘Crusades’ the ‘west’ brutalized the Levant & Jews, seeking commercial / strategic control. It further justified this in colonialism via Pope Alexander VI (a devious & brutal Borgia), through the ‘Doctrine of Discovery’ added to by ‘Terra Nullius’ and the ‘Doctrine of Reception’ (ancient Greko-Roman), all incorporated into the ‘Magna Carta’ and British common law.
After the Romans invaded, sacked and destroyed Palestine, the west convinced the Jews to escape the perditions of the Middle East, and move en masse to the protection of western Europe circa 1st Century CE. But the never satisfied ‘West’ oppressed and murdered Jews in Europe, and again the Jews fled en masse 12th through 17th Century CE. Similarly, the ‘West’ ousted the Moors in the 15th Century CE. Continuing signs of Christian righteousness.
In relative modernity, after the establishment of what became the ‘World Zionist Organization’, the western imperia, especially, Britain (and France) have been deceptive and self-serving in the Levant via the ‘Sykes Picot Agreement’ (1916) and then the ‘Balfour Declaration’ (1926), and the abject incompetent mess of the ‘Mandate’ (1923-48). Giving rise to Irgun, Lehi (the Stern Gang) and murderous conflicts between Jews and Palestinians, and huge numbers of British soldiers killed. A complete mess caused by Britain (and France), who scarped.
It’s no small irony, that at the time (1923), with the ‘League of Nations’ afoot, the ‘West’ settled the extensive ‘Treaty of Lausanne’ with the Turks, organizing the carve-up after the defeat of the Ottomans (and its empire). In that treaty there is no consideration or mention at all of Palestine, the Jews, nor Arabs. And the mess created by the Britain (and France), remained that way through WWII (and the Holocaust) and to the establishment of the UN (1945).
Then after the UN’s unilateral partition of Palestine to facilitate a homeland for Jews (as largely determined by leaders of Zionism) and the formation of Israel (which was never formal, but tacit), there followed a continuum of militarist Prime Ministers of Israel (a militarized state), with the exception of Rabin (the great two-state negotiator), who was assassinated by a disgruntled young Zionist.
And through this modern period, America became flooded with Ashkenazi Jews (from NE Europe), many of whom were Zionists, and became extremely wealthy and politically powerful, and despite its ‘Monroe Doctrine’ (1823 extant and endlessly conveniently reinterpreted) so political America became unremitting backers of Israel (and as ever divisive, confused and hypocritical), like now under Trump and his divisive urger ‘mate’ Netanyahu.
And so it goes on. A millennia+ of mess, turned to a current genocide before our eyes, and now an ‘evil’ massacre in Bondi (not Pam).
Oz now dances amongst all this, with a British monarch our Constitutional head, the LNP Howard govt contracting us to America’s F35 program, the American backing of Netanyahu’s Israel, Oz govt alignment with British / American security, Labor’s Palestine policy, Labor’s association with Jewish donors, Oz Zionist attacks on Oz institutions (re anti-semitsm) and Netanyahu’s attacks on Oz govt in the same vein, whilst allowing protests on behalf of Palestinians of Gaza and the West Bank.
With ubiquitous geopolitical / strategic febrility and eco-wars afoot, for the LNP opposition, One Nation, the msm and various partisans trumping up hostility and divisiveness in this circumstance and blaming Albo, is hurtful to many, gross low-brow opportunism, fear-mongering, democracy crushing, ignorant and puerile with a reckless disregard for those maimed and killed. A seed for the re-growth of all the horrors of history.
All so very true, so does anyone really think some adjustment to our gun legislation and introduction of Antisemitism legislation will correct centuries of corrupt administration?
As I have stated before, this has become a cultural issue, I’d suggest world wide, constantly fed by the rhetoric of politicians and the media.