Striking paradoxes emerged in the Sydney attack, which resulted in the killing of sixteen Jews and the injury of others on Bondi Beach while they were celebrating the Festival of Lights, Hanukkah.
As is customary and expected, the attack was subjected to extensive and intense political and propaganda exploitation. This exploitation aimed to reinforce the Israeli narrative of the war on Gaza and to hold Western governments responsible for the spread of antisemitism after they recognised the Palestinian state during the eighty-first session of the United Nations General Assembly. It is the pretext of antisemitism, once again and always, used to intimidate any opposition to Israeli policies.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu did not miss the opportunity to launch an attack on Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, accusing him of causing the incident and encouraging it.
This was not a message directed at Australia alone, but at all Western governments that have recognised, or are on the verge of recognising, the right of the Palestinian people to self-determination and to establish a state on the territories occupied since 5 June 1967. It was a clear and direct political exploitation of the Sydney attack.
No rational person views this attack as any form of support for the Palestinian cause. The truth is that it strikes at the very core of its moral and international legal legitimacy, as a cause of national liberation first and foremost.
Any conflation between the right to resistance, which international law legitimises in the face of foreign occupations, and terrorism as a violent act against defenceless civilians, undermines the justice of the cause, its credibility, and the respect it commands.
By invoking the charge of antisemitism, the aim this time was to undermine the moral foundation of the broad waves of popular sympathy and solidarity witnessed in European and Western capitals, rather than to condemn terrorism regardless of its source.
Netanyahu has long employed the weapon of antisemitism against anyone who defends the Palestinian cause in the face of the wars of extermination and starvation in Gaza, even though Arabs and Muslims were neither a party to nor partners in this dark chapter of history, during which wars of ethnic cleansing and the Holocaust took place.
According to the newspaper The Times of Israel, the Sydney attack came amid a rise in incidents hostile to Israel in Australia. This was an evasion of a truth known to the entire world and led to the erosion of Israel’s image until it became a pariah state.
The scenes of protest and anger involving hundreds of thousands of demonstrators that Sydney witnessed appeared as a humanitarian and political expression of a newly developed level of awareness regarding the justice of the Palestinian cause.
Israel has completely lost the war of images. No one in the world is prepared anymore to deceive themselves with its propaganda or to be intimidated without justification by accusations of antisemitism.
In the initial moments of the Sydney attack, there appeared to be an opportunity to lend the Israeli narrative of the events of 7 October 2023 a degree of persuasion and understanding within Western societies. This opportunity, however, was completely undone by a man in his forties, an Arab Muslim named Ahmad Al Ahmad, a fruit and vegetable seller who migrated from Syria in 2007 at the height of the civil war to work in Australia.
By coincidence, he was present at the scene at the moment of the terrorist attack. Driven by a sense of courage, he intervened, grabbed one of the attackers from behind, struggled with him, and seized the rifle from his hands. Had it not been for this intervention, the number of dead and injured would have multiplied.
Before the facts became clear, Netanyahu began praising the brave Jew who confronted the attack unarmed and showered him with positive attributes, only to be shocked shortly thereafter by the discovery that he was Syrian, Arab, and Muslim. In this way, the entire narrative collapsed from its foundations.
US President Donald Trump also tended to bestow the same attributes on Al Ahmad without pausing over his origin or religion.
In one way or another, the Palestinian narrative appeared more coherent and convincing once what had occurred on Bondi Beach became clear.
The worst development in the entire story was the mobilisation of a number of Jewish businessmen to raise donations amounting to 1.3 million dollars for Al Ahmad in honour of his role. His motives were not political, but purely humanitarian. These are matters that are neither bought nor sold.
Al Ahmad stands as the opposite face of Sajid Akram, the Indian Muslim affiliated with the Islamic State group, who, together with his son, carried out the attack.
Discussion of the Palestinian cause and its justice necessarily invokes another discussion about the absence of impunity. This is an implicit message in the Sydney attack and the political exploitation that accompanied it. By any human conscience or international legal consideration, Israel cannot be exempted from accountability by halting its prosecution before the International Court of Justice and the International Criminal Court.
Coinciding with the Sydney attack, another Islamic State attack targeted US forces stationed in Palmyra, killing two soldiers and a translator. The implication is that the Islamic State group remains present and entrenched, exploiting war crimes committed in the Arab Mashreq to acquire additional power.
This is a fact that cannot be denied.
We have a real and great peace in the Middle East. This was a baseless conclusion put forward by Trump.
Facts alone respond and refute. Gaza continues to be subjected to starvation and killing despite Trump’s plan, or perhaps because of it. What is taking place in the West Bank in terms of demographic reengineering and waves of displacement negates any form of peace, unless it is a peace of force.
Any political exploitation fails completely when contradicted by facts on the ground. This is precisely what happened in the aftermath of the Sydney attack.
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