Who’s to blame?

It didn’t take long for the nation's leading political opportunists to hijack the Bondi massacre for their own purposes.

In more considered times, the day after a massacre might not have been thought the best moment for political point-scoring. We do not live in such times.

John Howard, Sussan Ley and Benjamin Netanyahu did not hesitate. The man to blame for all this was Anthony Albanese.

“Your government did nothing to stop the spread of antisemitism in Australia,” said Netanyahu. “You did nothing to curb the cancer cells that were growing inside your country.

“You took no action. You let the disease spread and the result is the horrific attacks on Jews we saw today.”

Promptly, Howard and Ley provided echoes. The massacre was caused, apparently, by the Albanese government’s recognition of a Palestinian state, its even-handed approach between the Hamas massacre of October 2023 and the Israeli genocide, and its failure to restrict the rights of pro-Palestinian demonstrators.

As more becomes known about the shooters and their background, the less credible those political assaults become.

The surge in antisemitism can be dated to the outbreak of savagery in Gaza and the disproportionate response by Israel’s government and defence force. Some 1,219 people were killed by Hamas and another 250 taken hostage. In Gaza, Israeli forces have killed more than 70,000 people, largely destroyed the physical infrastructure including its hospitals. The International Criminal Court has issued an arrest warrant for Netanyahu to answer charges of war crimes and crimes against humanity.

Howard, interestingly, spoke of the Hamas attack but ignored the Israeli genocide.

In Australia, a number of high-profile antisemitic attacks have occurred, some of which appear to have been orchestrated by Iran. Many others, including the verbal attacks on Jews which largely go unreported, are home-grown.

There has also been a surge in incidents targeting migrants of Middle-Eastern origin. Those have been less well-reported.

There are two factors here: the ancient hatreds of the Middle East have been imported into Australia; but the Bondi massacre appears to have occurred in isolation from any wider antisemitic sentiment in sections of the Australian community. Those two people did not need to absorb their hatreds from Australians: their madness long preceded the war in Gaza, the election of the Albanese government and any broad increase in antisemitism. They were plugged into the Islamic State – a very different, much more dangerous, source of hatred.

This is what the government’s Australian National Security website says about it:

“Seeking to emulate the expansive success of Islamic conquests during the 7th to 10th centuries, Islamic State seeks to subjugate through terror and establish a pan-Islamic imperialist theocracy, with a view of ultimately dominating the globe. In prosecuting this agenda, it has commissioned numerous crimes against humanity, including genocide, ethnic cleansing, summary execution (including public beheading, crucifixion, stoning, hanging, burning, mutilation and dismemberment), mass rape, paedophilia, sexual slavery, forced marriages (including minors), theft, extortion, kidnaping and trafficking.”

This ideology, and those who follow it, will not be influenced by any program any Australian government could realistically put in place.

The nation needs better gun laws (though Howard described these as a “distraction”). We need better education about sectional hatreds and hate speech. But – above all – we must embrace the understanding that the reason this is one of the world’s most successful multicultural societies is that old hatreds from other lands must be left behind, and that everyone has the right to be here.

That includes Jews, Muslims, Christians, people from the Middle-East and from Asia, people whose forebears arrived with the First Fleet, and those whose ancestors came here 60,000 years ago.

Though we must always ensure our terrorism laws are fit for purpose, we must also be careful of indulging the impulse to suddenly and uncritically ramp them up, because single cases make bad law. We must accept that no intelligence system is infallible and never will be. Because of that, there can be no final assurance that appalling acts will not recur.

That must not make us forget who we are. A foundational requirement of any liberal democracy is the principle that all are free to live the lives they want, so long as their actions do not impinge on the freedom of others. The right to follow any religion, or none, is at the core of that principle.

That freedom should not extend to “firebrand” preachers who hide behind religion to promote their brand of violent hatred. Four Corners earlier this year identified Wisam Haddad as the spiritual leader of Australia’s pro-IS network. He has never been charged with a terrorism offence and continues to preach. One of his adherents was the surviving shooter, Naveed Akram.

If there is a culpability in government, its is perhaps that laws targeting hate speech were not enacted  and enforced decades ago. If they had been, people like Fred Nile might not have been so free to whip up lethal hatred and fear of gay men in the 1970s and 1980s, and Alan Jones might have faced sanctions for his role in the Cronulla race riots.

If anything good is to come out of all this, it is largely due to the actions of one remarkable man, Ahmed al-Ahmed, a devout Muslim who came from Syria and has been an Australian citizen since 2022. When he rushed to protect Jewish fellow citizens, he thought he would die. That didn’t stop him.

And so an atrocity which could so easily have been blamed on all Muslims can instead be seen in a clearer light, as the work of fanatics who do not represent any of us, no matter where we came from.