Bondi Beach attack: How Zionism manufactures insecurity while claiming to protect Jews

Following the Bondi Beach attack, the exact familiar pattern has emerged. Suddenly, Jews are living in a state of constant fear, antisemitism is spiralling out of control, and criticising Israel is somehow equivalent to inciting violence against Jews. This narrative however, avoids confronting the uncomfortable truth necessary to ensure genuine safety for Jewish people.

At some point, we need to be honest about reality.

The danger facing Jewish communities today does not emerge from anti-war protests, Palestinian solidarity, or criticism of Jewish Culture. It arises from the insistence that Zionism speaks for all Jews and that the actions of a violent settler-colonial state are synonymous with Jewish survival. 

That equation has been catastrophic and predicted by Albert Einstein right after the establishment of the Israeli state in 1948. 

As a decolonial researcher, and as someone whose political consciousness was shaped in a “post-colonised” World, I believe that the decolonisation process must involve the return of land to its rightful Palestinian owners. I reject the idea of  European settler claims, particularly those of Ashkenazi Jews with no continuous historical presence in Palestine, can be laundered into legitimacy through the language of “Jewish self-determination.” I align myself with the critical perspectives of anti-colonial scholars such as Ilan Pappé and Patrick Wolfe, who compellingly argue that colonial projects do not become moral simply because they adopt the vocabulary of trauma.  

My critique is specifically directed at Zionism and the violent actions of the Israeli state, not at the Jewish faith or cultural community as a whole.

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Decoupling faith from political violence

As a Muslim, I refuse the demand that I must apologise for the crimes of the ISIS Bondi attack simply because they claim Islam as their banner. I am no more responsible for ISIS than a Christian is responsible for the Ku Klux Klan or Anders Breivik. Violent movements routinely weaponise religion and they are not its theological custodians.

Yet Muslims are persistently held collectively accountable in ways that no other faith community is. This double standard is dangerously structural, racialised, and deeply political. Ironically, the same logic is now being inverted to shield Israel: criticism of a state is framed as hatred of a people; opposition to genocide is reframed as anti-Semitism.

The truth of an internal Jewish war

We are also told a comforting story that Judaism today is locked in an epic internal struggle between Zionist and anti-Zionist Jews, and that the former are a fringe distortion rather than the institutional mainstream.

This narrative, while emotionally reassuring, is empirically weak. 

The overwhelming majority of mainstream Jewish institutions in the West openly support the State of Israel. Synagogues that consistently and publicly denounce Israel’s destruction of Gaza, its apartheid regime, and its mass civilian killing are rare exceptions, not the norm. Organised Jewish communal leadership particularly in the United States and Australia has largely aligned itself with Israeli state policy, even when those policies violate international law.

Naming this reality is morally necessary and it is unfair to label it as antisemitic. If this truth makes people uncomfortable, good. Discomfort is often the beginning of ethical clarity and I won’t be swayed by accusations or intimidated into silence as this truth demands to be spoken. The global community must confront the reality that Judaism has been distorted into a supremacist ideology, which serves to legitimise and protect Israel’s use of state violence.

Nonetheless, as I reflect on my Muslim faith, I honour and admire the commitment of Jewish organisations and individuals who adhere to the principles outlined in the Ten Commandments (such as the prohibitions on land theft and unjust killing) even if they are few in number. 

Israel’s moral bankruptcy and political narcissism

In the aftermath of the Bondi Beach attack, the Israeli government had the audacity not to interrogate its own policy failures at home or abroad, but to criticise the Australian government for recognising Palestine and allowing anti-war protests. Their moral failure to acknowledge the conflation of Israeli state actions with Jewish lives that fuels the very “antisemitism” officials claim to fight is profoundly incomprehensible. 

A state that truly cared about Jewish safety would confront how its system of apartheid, settlement expansion, disproportionate violence against civilians, and genocidal siege of Gaza has fuelled global instability and hatred. Instead, Israel externalises responsibility, demanding silence and obedience while escalating violence.

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ISIS, Israel, and the politics of blowback

Australian intelligence agencies have confirmed that the Bondi attackers were known to authorities years prior, with links to ISIS. This matters; not because it indicts Islam, but because we need to be clear in our analyses of extremist violence. ISIS is not Hamas. To equate ISIS with Palestinian resistance movements like Hamas is analytically lazy and politically counterproductive. 

ISIS emerged out of the chaos of foreign invasions and sectarian engineering in Iraq and Syria, with a stated aim of establishing a Sunni caliphate; not in resisting imperial occupation. Doctrinally and strategically, ISIS belongs to the Salafi-Jihadi tradition (like the talibans) that considers Palestinians nationalist heretics and Shia Muslims apostates. Historically, ISIS has never prioritised fighting Israel. Its primary objective has been the destabilisation of Muslim societies and the destruction of local resistance movements.

There is documented evidence that Israel has treated wounded fighters affiliated with al-Nusra Front and other extremist groups during the Syrian war, providing medical aid in the occupied Golan Heights while simultaneously bombing Syrian and Hezbollah positions. Israeli officials including Benjamin Netanyahu and Moshe Ya’alon have openly acknowledged tactical alignment  and non-aggression with groups ideologically adjacent to ISIS for its geopolitical benefits.

Resistance, colonialism, and moral complexity

Growing up in a post-colonial nation taught me that resistance to occupation is not terrorism by definition; at least not in the eyes of the oppressed people. Anti colonial movements such as Hamas, like the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa and the National Liberation Front (FLN) in Algeria historically, emerged in the context of systemic disenfranchisement and global political exclusion.

Refusing to simplify these dynamics into moral binaries is not to excuse every tactical choice they make; it is to recognise that the right to have armed resistance against an occupying power is a valid reaction (see Geneva Convention 1949) to conditions created by foreign domination (colonialism) and inequality. 

Having said that, I profusely condemn the Bondi attack, regardless of whether it was inspired by ISIS, Mossad-linked provocateurs, or something else. Targeting innocent people is atrocious, and anyone who harms civilians should be unequivocally opposed. 

 So, if you rightly condemn the horrific, antisemitic attack on Bondi Beach, yet continue to defend the genocide in Gaza, your outrage over the killing of innocents rings hollow—unless, of course, you believe some lives are worth more than others.

I however do not feel obligated to eulogise political supporters of genocide and colonial apologists, nor do I feel  compelled to elevate them to martyr status, particularly individuals like Rabbi Eli Schlanger. Just like I do not mourn the cessation of the IOFs or Nazis. Moral clarity allows us to condemn acts of violence without sanctifying every advocate of genocide. 

Solidarity without instrumentalisation: Who benefits from chaos? 

My allegiance is with innocent Jewish people who refuse to conflate their faith with a violent state project, just as it is with Palestinians living under occupation, dispossession, and siege. 

I stand against the use of antisemitism and Islamophobia as a political shield, precisely because both are deployed to justify Israel’s brutality, silence dissent, and targets Muslims in the name of counter-terrorism while enriching the military-industrial complex. Criticism of apartheid and occupation is not hatred of Jewish people but a demand for universal human rights.

The post-9/11 world demonstrated how terror can be exploited to justify expansive invasions and exploit resources, draconian surveillance, and racist migration policies. Today, similar dynamics exist when a conflict could potentially become an excuse to intensify militarisation and to silence resistance. 

Amidst the Bondi Beach attack, the question we must ask is not who committed this violence, but whose interests it serves. 

Not Muslims.

Not ordinary Jewish people.

But states that thrive and profit on fear, division, and perpetual war. 

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The views expressed in this article belong to the author and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Middle East Monitor.