How misinformation spread online after Bondi Beach attack - "Among the baseless rumours that this was a false flag attack were claims that one of the shooter's names had spiked as a Google search term before the attack even took place. More specific rumours centred on how the name was being used in Google searches in Australia and Israel before the attack happened, suggesting involved parties. However, an analysis of Google Trends showed that in Australia, the name started trending at about 9am GMT on Sunday. The first reports of an active shooter on the beach were at 7.45am GMT (6.45pm local time). In Israel, it was the same story. The search term 'naveed akram' began trending at 10am GMT, an hour later than Australia, reflecting the delay it took for news of the name of one of the suspects to go international. Similar claims emerge frequently amid major incidents, and usually involve the uploaders making a mistake around time zones. On Google Trends, data is shown in the viewer's local time, not the local time of the country where the event took place. For an incident in Australia, which has a very different time zone from most of the West, there is even more room for time-related errors."
Unsurprisingly, terrorism supporters aren't smart
Bondi hero attacked as ‘traitor’ in Arab world - "Ahmed al-Ahmed, the Syrian Australian hero who tackled a terrorist gunman and saved the lives of Jews at Bondi, is being attacked in the Arab world as a traitor and a mercenary. On the popular Palestinian Facebook site Ramallah News, 75 per cent of hundreds of comments say Ahmed’s lifesaving actions – lauded by world leaders including US President Donald Trump – amounted to a treasonous act because it saved the lives of Jewish Australians. “Treason comes to you from the closest people” and “he sold himself and his life for the safety of the Jews” were among the comments, overwhelmingly posted by Palestinians. “I wish it (the bullet) hit your heart,” one commentator said, while another said “May Allah not heal you”. Ramallah News is one of the most popular Palestinian news sources, with millions of followers. It posted a news item about the terror attack in Bondi which drew more than 1000 comments, 30 per cent of which claimed Israel itself was behind the attack. But it was the heroism of 43-year-old Ahmed, a Syrian-born Arab Muslim, which attracted the most criticism. Melbourne man Ahron Shapiro, a senior researcher for Palestinian Media Watch who analysed the comments, said the “feel-good story” about Ahmed, who remains in hospital recovering from bullet wounds he sustained after disarming gunman Sajid Akram, was a bad news story for many Palestinians. He said of the many hundreds of comments about Ahmed, 75 per were unsupportive or hostile, while around 20 per cent were supportive of him and 5 per cent neutral. Many of Ahmed’s critics bizarrely claimed he tackled the gunman for money. “He played it right, he wants the money,“ said one. ‘He has received a million dollars in rewards … he acted ‘manly’ in the wrong place,” said another. Others were more threatening. “By Allah we will surely chop you to pieces … we will not leave a trace of you,” one said. “May God send you a disease that has no cure,” said another. One comment said “he killed a Muslim soul to please his masters the Jewish Dogs … eternally in the fires of hell”. Another said “he is an atheist. If he was a Muslim he would have helped the terrorist”... Many of the comments about the Bondi shooting claimed the attack was “orchestrated by the Mossad” to generate sympathy for Jews. “This is the work of the Zionist Mossad, exactly like the (9/11) events of the American towers,” one comment on the Ramallah News Facebook site said. Another commenter said: “They are the ones who created terrorism, and they sacrifice a few pigs of their own to flip the scales.” One comment stated: “They want the world’s sympathy. They are the ones who commit these tricks.” Another said: “The Australian government took a firm stance against the entity during the genocide operation in Gaza. This is certainly the work of the Mossad to pressure the Australian government to change its position toward the entity.” One comment said: “The Zionists have now begun operations to restore the image of victimhood and try to win international sympathy again to fight extremism and anti-Semitism.” The conspiratorial comments follow a statement by the Palestinian Authority condemning the Bondi attack that failed to acknowledge the perpetrators were targeting Jews... the Hamas terrorist group seized on the Bondi massacre, portraying it as an act of solidarity with its terrorist cause and a justification for its efforts to murder Jews worldwide... Dr Ran Porat, a research associate at Monash University’s Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation, said Palestinian social media responses to the Sydney attack were consistent with the prevalence in the Arab world of Holocaust denial and distorted views on the October 7, 2023, attacks on Israel. “What connects these phenomena is a lack of self-reflection and a refusal to take responsibility for the extremism that emerges from education and incitement,” he told The Australian. “Even more disturbing is the fact that these views are being echoed in Australia by fundamentalist preachers in mosques, in media outlets targeting Australian Arabs and Muslims, and within universities."
Clearly Palestinians and "pro-Palestine" people are only against "Zionists", because anti-Zionism is totally different from anti-Semitism
From 7/7 to Bondi Beach, extremist Islamism has been tolerated. That must now end - "There’s an urban myth about cooking a frog – that, if the animal is hurled into boiling water, it will leap out, scorched. But that if it’s placed in cold water that’s slowly heated, the frog will sit quietly oblivious until it dies. In a parallel world, we are the frog. Perhaps the worst horror of the massacre of innocents on Bondi Beach is that it wasn’t exceptional. Rather, it was the latest bloody footstep in the procession of terror that began on 9/11 – and has seen, here in Britain, the 7/7 London underground bombings, the attack on Glasgow airport, the murder of Lee Rigby, the Manchester arena bombing and a mass of other atrocities and incidents, the latest of which saw the first anti-Semitic murders in Britain in modern times at Heaton Park Synagogue in Manchester. But like the frog in the water, we’re becoming so familiar with this diet of slaughter and grief that perhaps we take it for granted. And, after all, we ourselves and our families are unlikely to be directly affected. We watch politicians condemn the terrorists, call for calm, praise the police, wring their hands on behalf of the victims – and, like us, move on to think or talk about matters less baleful. Nonetheless, the mass murder of Jews celebrating a religious holiday on an Australian beach is part of a developing story in the Western world in which we are all caught up. The protests that target synagogues, the Holocaust revisionism, the capitulation of West Midlands police to a mob, the open support for Hamas, the black-clad marchers in East London, the cries of “globalise the intifada”: these have consequences. They are symptoms and causes of a growing phenomenon. Until as recently as last year, elections in Britain were contested and won by secular parties: that’s to say, which stand for no particular ethnic or religious group. This is beginning to change. The old world of class-based politics has been breaking down for over half a century, weakening the parties that once held a monopoly on representing labour and capital – that’s to say, Labour and the Conservatives. Clan, faith-based and ethnic politics are among the forces filling the gap. The electoral fuel that powers the Gaza independents isn’t only – or perhaps even mostly – explicitly sectarian. These new MPs represent voters who feel that Labour has done nothing for them and, in part, are doing what parliamentarians of all complexions have always done – namely, campaigning for more money for their constituents. Nonetheless, the core of this new force is clearly Muslim voters, fed on a diet of social media outrage about Gaza. The result of the decline of the established parties and the fragmentation of British politics is a hung parliament – sooner or later. How many Gaza independents, Greens or Islamist-aligned MPs will hold seats? What would they demand if they held the balance of power? What will fill the gap if a Reform Government comes and fails? Could it be the likes of Tommy Robinson and the Muslim Vote?... You would have thought that the Government would be straining at the leash to mobilise the moderate majority from all backgrounds. Not a bit of it. Remarkably, there is no Government counter-extremism strategy. There was until recently a Counter-Extremism Commissioner, Robin Simcox. He hasn’t been replaced. Labour isn’t solely to blame. The fact is that Ministers of all parties, the security services, the police and the civil service have been nervous since the Cold War of targeting ideology and subversion – of seeking to the drain the swamp, as it were, as well as removing the crocodiles. But there is a link between cries of “globalise the intifada” and dead and wounded Jews on Bondi Beach. Indeed, dead and wounded Jews is what globalising the intifada looks like.At any rate, the most recent Prime Minister to understand the problem was David Cameron. His Munich speech of 2011 began to put a counter-extremism strategy in place. But in 2021, his Conservative successors scrapped it. And now Labour, rather than utilising laws that protect people of all faiths and none, is poised further to inhibit free speech by issuing an Islamophobia definition."
The Left’s delusion about diversity isn’t just naive – it’s dangerous - "People always accuse Sir Keir Starmer of being a dull speaker. But I don’t think that’s entirely fair. Because, last month, he said something so fascinating that I’ve been pondering it ever since. Voters, declared the Prime Minister, must reject “the toxic division of Reform” – because “to be British” is “to be diverse”. Is it? I must confess, I find this a puzzling thought. After all, I’m British – yet I’m not diverse. I can’t be, because there’s only one of me. And, by definition, no individual can be diverse. So, if to be British is to be diverse, this logically means that no one is British. In which case, what nationality am I? At any rate, I thank the Prime Minister for providing us with this complex philosophical conundrum. I just hope that one day he’ll explain it. Still, if you’re struggling to make sense of Sir Keir’s thoughts on diversity, just wait till you hear those of his colleague Lola McEvoy, the Labour MP for Darlington. On Sunday morning, as news broke of the mass shooting in Australia, GB News asked Ms McEvoy to comment. She began by saying that, at such an early stage, “I don’t want to speculate on what the factors are that have contributed to this awful tragedy.” But then, for reasons I still can’t fathom, she launched into a sermon about the importance of celebrating “diversity”... I’ve long found “diversity is our strength” to be one of the Left’s most wearying platitudes. After what happened at Bondi Beach, however, it seems not merely naive, but mind-bogglingly deluded. If I were a Labour MP, and a TV station asked me to comment on breaking news of a mass shooting, I like to think I’d have the sense to tell myself: “Don’t witter about how ‘diversity is our strength’ – just in case this story proves to be about members of one ethnic group massacring members of another. If it does, after all, viewers might suggest that diversity is actually a weakness. Because, without it, atrocities like this couldn’t happen.” Then again, if I were a Labour MP, I’d probably have stopped lecturing voters that “diversity is our strength” quite some time ago. Because I’d have realised that voters might respond by reminding me of the attack on the Manchester synagogue, and the two Afghan asylum seekers jailed for raping a girl of 15, and the migrant hotel worker stabbed to death with a screwdriver, and the grooming gangs – among countless other possible examples. And what would I say in reply? “Come on, that was all just a bit of collateral damage. Necessary sacrifices on the road to multicultural utopia.” Still, you never know. Perhaps Labour MPs will now finally stop parroting this mindless cliché. With luck, one or two might even contemplate the possibility that the divisions in our society have not been caused by the people who criticise multiculturalism. They’ve been caused by the people who enabled it."
Drew Pavlou 🇦🇺🇺🇸🇺🇦🇹🇼 on X - "The Coalition’s response to the Islamic terror attack on Bondi Beach is to completely stop talking about immigration. The Australian center-right is weak as piss. American friends - just imagine a world where Jeb! still ruled the Republican Party. That’s literally where we are here in Australia."
Australian prime minister vows to toughen hate speech laws in wake of Jewish holiday attack - "Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Thursday promised a crackdown on hate speech in the wake of the attack on a Jewish holiday event at Sydney's Bondi Beach, which left 15 dead... A 19-year-old Sydney man was charged and will face court on Thursday after allegedly threatening violence towards a Jewish person on a flight from Bali to Sydney on Wednesday. "Police will allege the man made antisemitic threats and hand gestures indicating violence towards the alleged victim, who the man knew to be affiliated with the Jewish community," Australian federal police said on Thursday... The centre-left Labour government has ruled out holding a Royal Commission, a high-level inquiry with judicial powers, into the shootings for now. On Wednesday, the leader of New South Wales where the attack took place said he would next week recall the state parliament to pass urgent reforms on gun laws."
Clearly, jailing people for Islamophobia will keep Jews safe
Allegra Spender on X - "My community wants action not words to guarantee safety and security. Jewish Australians like all Australians should be able to practice their faith openly, freely and safely. We need a cabinet level Minister for Social Cohesion and tougher laws to crack down on hate speech."
Ζoë Booth on X - "She somehow managed to bring trans ideology into this. The reality: Islam has a problem with Jews, Christians and the Australian lifestyle and culture. While most Muslims won’t act on it, at any given time we have a large amount of Muslim men who will. On Sunday, they succeeded. This is the first time it’s happened in Australia but I have lost track of how many times it’s happened overseas. It’s going to happen again. Your proposed hate speech laws mean less than nothing. Jihadists aren’t radicalised by hate speech. They are radicalised by their religious texts, and the mosques politicians like you allow to preach whatever the fuck they want to here. You allow them to fester, you think their culture is beautiful and lovely and smells like roses, you do not offer any encouragement to temper their fanaticism and to assimilate into the Australian culture. Then you and the Left in general provide them with the cover that this is just about Palestine and human rights, and sanitise their image in the public eye. Through your cowardice and sycophancy not only have you helped enable the murder of 15 innocent people, you’ve done something even worse in my eyes. You made jihadists happy. They were there at the pro-Hamas rally of October 9. You voted to reinstate funding to Hamas through UNRWA, this made them happy. You laundered their jihadism into something palatable and professional and you did it very well. With leaders like you, we are asleep at the wheel."
Brianna Wu on X - "I can tell you firsthand, if you are trans these people hate us more than any conservative westerner ever will"
Mark Higgie on X - "Australia is run by undergraduate Lefties who refuse to accept obvious facts: Albanese astonishingly denies extremist Islam is the greatest threat Australia faces, preferring to talk about ‘neo-Nazis’, in Leftist fantasies somehow an at least equal threat."
Melanie Phillips on X - "Radical Islam poses the widest and most acute threat to the free world. Yet Australia’s prime minister Anthony Albanese thinks it’s no greater a problem for his country than citizens killing police officers, neo-Nazis with their faces covered -- and an attack upon an ANC member when he was at Sydney University. In 1983. Clearly, he has never outgrown his infantile, monomaniacal leftism. No wonder Australian Jews are under attack."
Dr David Adler on X - "IS THERE AN ASSOCIATION BETWEEN ISLAM & TERRORISM? In Australia, about 95% of terror related convictions have some link to Islam. This from a Muslim population of about 3.5%. There seems to be a message here the government can't even articulate much less deal with."
Jon Harris on X - "If the Albanese govt lose that 3.5% they are cooked. It’s all about keeping Labor in power."
Car with ‘Happy Chanukah’ sign firebombed in suspected antisemitic attack in Melbourne : r/worldnews - "Next step is Molotov Cocktail buy back and declare the source of the problem solved once again?"
Car with ‘Happy Chanukah’ sign firebombed in suspected antisemitic attack in Melbourne : r/worldnews - "Australia was told that recognizing Palestine would be seen as a reward for terrorism, and that it would increase terrorism, and that is exactly what happened. When terrorists know they can get concessions after an attack, they will do it over and over again to get more concessions. Australia's leaders have blood on their hands. They should immediately rescind recognition of the terrorist state of Palestine. Stop rewarding terrorism and the terrorism is less likely to happen."
"It’s weird that there are well publicized anti semitic attacks happening with what appears to be serious increase in frequencies from countries that just recognized Palestine - it totally must be a coincidence"
Jews Fight Back 🇺🇸🇮🇱 on X - "🚨 AUSTRALIA, THIS IS YOUR PRIME MINISTER. 🚨 Anthony Albanese stepped off a VIP flight from Washington wearing a Joy Division T‑shirt. He asked the media not to film him. Why? Because he knew exactly what the name meant. Joy Division was the name the Nazis gave to the section of concentration camps where Jewish women were enslaved and raped by SS officers. Albanese was told this three years earlier. On a podcast. He understood. He even asked that part of the conversation not be published. Disgusting."
Bondi attack: Migration and integration failures allowed Islamist extremism to take root (aka "Bondi attack shows why we should rewrite immigration policy, not civil liberties") - "The Bondi Beach attack has produced a familiar reflex: we reach for the fastest levers – tighten speech, narrow protest, expand bans. That may feel decisive, but it risks further eroding the freedoms of ordinary Australians, when the evidence suggests failures in our migration and integration settings allowed Islamist extremism to take root in the first place. Islamist extremism is not new to Australia. We have long lived under its shadow: the quiet spread of hostile-vehicle bollards; the inconvenient rituals of airport security and its enduring restrictions on what we can carry through a checkpoint. These passive measures, designed to help us adapt to a society shared with extremists, are so ubiquitous that it’s easy to forget why we have them. But the threat has been there — real and bubbling away for decades. Hundreds of Australians attempted to fight for Islamic State. And security services still routinely investigate and foil terror plots. What we know so far from the Bondi Beach attack makes the problem harder — and the choices clearer. Sajid Akram arrived on a student visa in 1998 and lived here for decades. His son is an Australian-born citizen that allegedly associated with IS affiliated groups dating back to 2019. That history should chill anyone tempted to treat this as solely a byproduct of the recent antisemitism surge or as a problem that can still be stopped at the border. This tragedy is the result of longstanding failures across the full lifecycle of migration and integration policies: how we screen, how we acculturate, how we enforce norms, and how we respond when warning signs appear. Australia’s story – at its best – is of an open society confident enough to welcome newcomers and to insist on its social norms. Yet over time we have drifted into an ambiguity that serves nobody: a posture celebrating difference, while becoming reluctant to champion the civic values that make our liberal democracy work. In that vacuum, it is too easy for parallel value systems to take root among the minority drawn to illiberal ideologies preaching separation and violence. Up until now, we’ve lived up to our reputation as the lucky country. While we’ve been complacent, other Western democracies have been forced to confront failed migration policies, often after extremist attacks in their own countries. Across Europe, countries that once waxed lyrically about multiculturalism have increasingly moved towards civic integration models – clearer expectations, formal boundaries, and fewer carve-outs for practices that clash with liberal norms. Many of these changes have been implemented by centre-left governments dispelling the notion that this is a far-right program. Consider family settings. Sweden has moved to ban first-cousin marriages, explicitly framed around reducing “honour oppression”. Similarly, Denmark banned those under 18 from entering into marriage. More than 20 countries, including many Muslim-majority countries and European countries, ban full-face coverings. France’s ban has existed since 2010, which the European Court of Human Rights upheld on the grounds that it helps public order and safety, promotes social cohesion, and respect the rights of women. Crucially, many countries are leaning heavier into civic requirements – as a practical signal that long-term residency reflects membership in a community that bestows mutual obligations. In Denmark, permanent settlement requires migrants to demonstrate several criteria including long-term employment, language proficiency and absence of criminal convictions. These measures are a pivot from integration programs that tailored societies to better incorporate migrants, and towards a model centring the host society’s civic values – rule of law, equal dignity of women and men, free expression, and the primacy of democratic institutions. It’s ultimately a recognition that certain behaviours that were once generally accepted social norms, must become proactively enshrined when countries transition into multicultural societies. Australia sits at this crossroad. We can respond to December 14 by granting extremists a perverse victory: the corrosion of the liberal freedoms they hate. Or we can strengthen the upstream settings that target the real problem: those who reject liberal democracy and seek to live here while undermining its foundations. That begins with an honest conversation about what integration means. It must be measurable, enforceable, and tied to real consequences. It should include clear civic expectations, a credible enforcement posture and politicians championing both. If we want fewer bollards, fewer checkpoints, and fewer memorials, we must stop treating Australia’s civic culture as something negotiable or impolite to assert. A liberal society survives by being clear about what it is and unembarrassed about defending it. We should not let civil liberties become another casualty of this tragedy."
Too bad integration is racist and Islamophobic
Bondi shooting: Sussan Ley is right that Anthony Albanese must call a royal commission - "Following calamitous events such as bushfires, floods, and major accidents, it is common for governments to appoint a royal commission to investigate the facts about what happened and why, and to allocate responsibility for who did or did not take action. Such inquiries are also expected to make recommendations to prevent such issues from occurring again. So far, the Albanese government has rejected calls for a royal commission. In so doing, it has sidestepped the underlying causes of the massacre and refused to put its own possible misplaced policy actions that many believe have contributed to the present crisis under open public review. While the Minns NSW government could appoint its own royal commission into the massacre, that would only cover matters under its jurisdiction and be primarily about the role and effectiveness of its police services – and less about the wider national policy issues of immigration intakes and checking, anti-radicalisation programs, and national security measures. It may be what the Albanese government would like to take attention off itself, but it is not what is needed. Royal commissions are a very special form of public inquiry that governments turn to when the existing institutions are not trusted – it is the institution of last resort. Their statutory-based coercive powers of investigation allow them to forcibly procure information, require witnesses to attend, and, not being courts, make witnesses answer questions even if self-incriminatory. They provide legal protection to those giving evidence, thus encouraging those who might know something to come forward. This is essential in this case. Moreover, royal commissions conduct their inquiries in public and are often chaired by eminent ex-judges. They are seen as more open and independent than other institutions of government. One issue, though, royal commissions only make non-binding recommendations. It is up to the government of the day to implement all, some or none of their proposals. Calls for a royal commission to also investigate antisemitism are understandable, as the massacre was far more than a problem with gun control and involved wider factors"
Naturally, left wingers were saying there was no point having one. Clearly they know better than the author, who was involved with them
Bondi massacre: Anthony Albanese fails to match John Howard’s speech after the 2002 Bali bombing - "Perhaps what is most noteworthy about the Bondi memorial organisers’ rejection of the prime minister’s offer to speak was how unsurprising it was. Anthony Albanese just doesn’t have a whole lot to say. The response to the Bondi massacre was a test of leadership and empathy that the prime minister failed... Albanese’s haphazard response highlights an inability to connect with Australians on a deeper level... Despite a heavy media presence, the prime minister’s efforts have been seen as robotic and wooden. In one bizarre exchange, Albanese responded to a question about whether the government had done enough to combat antisemitism, claiming “we’re doing what we can”. To another similar question about his government’s record, he noted “anti-semitism didn’t begin in 2022”. Small wonder the memorial organisers did not feel compelled to give the prime minister a speaking slot. If the prime minister were capable of speaking honestly about the condition of the country and social cohesion, then maybe things would have been different. But it is a truth that Albanese dares not speak. The Bondi massacre highlights that successive governments have had too little regard for the integration of a record number of arrivals into Australia. In February this year, ASIO Director-General Mike Burgess reported on a surge in antisemitic attacks, pointing out that “the normalisation of violent protest and intimidating behaviour lowered the threshold for provocative and potentially violent acts”. Thinking and speaking honestly about Bondi invites too many questions about how the policy of multiculturalism has enabled a violent minority under the guise of “cultural diversity”. One does not need to be a cynic to recognise Albanese’s narrowness. He once remarked “I like fighting Tories, that’s what I do”, offering a testimony to the tribal politics he honed at the University of Sydney as a left-wing student activist.The prime minister’s response to the Bondi massacre appears to confirm this narrow tribal mentality. Rather than put the national interest first and acknowledge the problem of festering radical Islamism, Albanese has put forward ideas to make restrictive gun laws even more strict and to add more so-called “hate speech” laws to the statute books. Nobody could seriously argue that it is not already unlawful to incite violence, or that the authorities are incapable of monitoring organisations or individuals that engage in conduct that could lead to violence. Those who imply that if only the legislation had been different, the attack would not have happened are either lying to us – or to themselves."
