Thursday, December 18, 2025

12/18 Links Pt1: Why Won't the West Defend Jews?; Netanyahu pleads for Australia to ‘Wake up’; Police probe possible link between MIT professor's killing and Brown University shooting

From Ian:

Melanie Phillips: The global intifada
For starters, a responsible and civilized government should be rooting out these extremist imams, prosecuting or deporting them as appropriate. It should be banning the Muslim Brotherhood and its affiliates, along with Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. It is intolerable that these subversive or terror-promoting groups should be operating with impunity in the West.

In addition, any responsible and civilized government should be calling out the defamatory lies about Israel as the tissue of falsehoods that they are and as a weapon of war to destroy Israel through delegitimization

Yet the British, Australian and Canadian governments have themselves been promoting these lies, thus fanning the flames of murderous Islamist hysteria about Israel and Jews.

The Jewish world should be likewise calling out those in its own community who unwittingly lend their support to the Islamist onslaught.

The danger to the Jews is not just from physical attack. What we are witnessing is an all-out onslaught—not just on Israel, but on Judaism, by anti-Israel obsessives both inside and outside the Jewish community who are seeking to set Judaism against Zionism.

Since Judaism constitutes the inseparable fusion of the people, the faith and the land, setting it against Zionism—the right of the Jews to self-determination in their ancestral homeland—is an attempt to rip out Judaism’s very soul.

If the struggle to stamp out antisemitism is to mean anything more than hollow platitudes, then it must consist of zero tolerance for Islamic extremism—and zero tolerance for the delegitimization of the world’s only Jewish state.


Jonathan Sacerdoti: Why Won't the West Defend Jews?
Bondi Beach is not occupied territory. It is not contested land. Still, on a day marked for celebration, Jews were once again slaughtered, picked off by a Muslim father and son who were motivated to kill as if it were their God-given right.

The war has not ended. It has migrated. It is a war that spreads through ideology, through grievance networks, through digital propaganda and imported narratives, recruiting from mosques and message boards, from fringe collectives and activist mobs. The enemies of the West no longer require battalions; they need only a few men with weapons.

Our political leaders urge Jews to stay calm, as if a lack of calm is the issue. Many Jews are drawing the only logical conclusion: their governments may not ever properly protect them. They are making plans - not out of hysteria, but realism. It is not cowardice to prepare for an exit when one's position has been abandoned from above. It is memory at work.

There is an unholy alliance of Islamists and anarchists whose shared aim is to destabilize the West from within. Their targets are not only Jews but the norms that sustain Western civilization: public safety, legal equality, freedom of expression, civic trust. This time they came for Hanukkah. Next time they'll come for Christmas.

Jews represent the freedoms and values of the West because many of those values are actually Jewish, embraced and adopted by Christianity and wider secular society. The attacks by the enemies of civilization on us are actually just one small part of their broader attacks on the entire West.

Security measures once reserved for foreign embassies are now required at primary schools. This is not normal. Yet this is the modern Jewish experience. The moral clarity required to confront this has been replaced by moral confusion. The state, instead of defending its citizens robustly, now negotiates with those who threaten them. It manages risk rather than removing it. That is how a festival becomes a crime scene.
The Impotence of the West in the Face of Islamist Antisemitism
The massacre perpetrated in Sydney against hundreds of Jews celebrating Hanukkah proves once again that Islamists are waging a religious war against the people of Israel and against all non-believers in the West. They consistently choose a Jewish or Christian holiday to commit barbaric attacks.

Western nations have remained unable to eradicate the scourge of Islamist terror. Numerous attacks have been thwarted thanks to invaluable intelligence provided by Mossad to various intelligence services. Without these warnings, the list of Islamist attacks in Europe and Australia would have been longer.

There is no difference between the Palestinian Hamas terrorists and all the Shiite and Sunni terrorists who perpetrate attacks in Sydney, Washington, Manchester, or Paris. They all wish to create Islamic states in place of the Jewish state and Christian countries. Even today, Saladin remains a hero of Islam, the great victor over the Crusaders in 1187.

We have no choice but to continue our tireless fight against the cult of death. It is our collective destiny. For over a century, we have been fighting the scourge of Palestinian terrorism, and every day we thwart planned attacks. The Jewish state is acting in legitimate self-defense and has the absolute right to fight, without pity and without mercy, against all those who want to wipe us off the map.
Police probe possible link between MIT professor's killing and Brown University shooting
Authorities are looking into a connection between last week's mass shooting at Brown University and the death of Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) professor Nuno Loureiro, local media reported, citing multiple individuals familiar with the matter.

Investigators are reportedly searching for a person of interest, believing that the vehicle rented by the Brown University shooter is of the same make and model as the one identified in the investigation into Loureiro's killing, according to The New York Times.

According to AP, the FBI had previously said it knew of no links between the cases.

Two shot at Brown Uni, MIT professor gunned down in home
The shooting at Brown University left two students dead and another nine people wounded. Police have released surveillance footage showing the possible shooter in order to gain the public's help in identifying the assailant.

"We are doing everything we can to reassure folks, to provide comfort, and that is the best answer I can give to that difficult question,” AP quoted Providence Mayor Brett Smiley as saying as he acknowledged that "a scary time in the city."

Loureiro, however, was found critically wounded by gunfire inside his home in the town of Brookline near Boston on Tuesday, some 80 km away from Brown University. He was rushed to a nearby hospital, where he was pronounced dead in the early morning hours.


They came seeking freedom: Russian-speaking Jews bore the brunt of Bondi attack
The parents of 10-year-old Matilda, the youngest of the 15 people killed during Sunday’s terror attack at a Hanukkah party at Bondi Beach, hadn’t planned to address the large crowd that gathered for a heart-rending vigil at the Bondi Beach Pavilion days after the attack.

But as her father, Michael, got up to speak in his Ukrainian accent on Wednesday, he shared a poignant detail that revealed how he saw his family’s place in the country. (The family is withholding their last name for privacy.)

“I named her Matilda because she was our firstborn in Australia,” he said, sobbing. “I thought that Matilda was the most Australian name that could ever exist.”

“So just remember – remember her name,” he added, before breaking down and turning to his family.

It was a striking moment that shone a brief spotlight on the attitudes of Russian and Ukrainian immigrants within Australia’s larger Jewish community — a community that moved over the course of decades to the other side of the world to start new lives in a country known for its tolerance and liberal values.

“Most of the people here immigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1970s, and later in the 1990s, to escape what was happening there,” explained Anna Maylis, the head of Kangarusski, an organization for Russian-speaking immigrants run by the Zionist Federation of Australia. “Our community loves Australia, and feels very much part of the country, but we don’t see a bright future here at the moment.”

Immigrants from the former Soviet Union make up a sizable portion of Australia’s 120,000-strong Jewish community. There are about 5,000 FSU immigrants living in Sydney, and a bit more than that in Melbourne, Maylis said. If you include the Australian-born children of these immigrants, as much as a quarter of the country’s Jews have Russian origins, she added.

At the Bondi Beach Hanukkah party that became the site of the world’s deadliest attack on Jews outside Israel in years, more than half of the estimated thousand attendees came from the Russian community, and many of those killed or injured were from those families, Maylis noted.

Fourteen of the victims of the Sydney Hanukkah shooting: top row (left to right) – Reuven Morrison, Rabbi Yaakov Levitan, Dan Elkayam, Alex Kleytman, Rabbi Eli Schlanger; middle row (left to right) – Edith Brutman, Peter Meagher, Tibor Weitzen, Marika Pogany, Matilda [last name withheld at the request of her parents]; bottom row (left to right) – Boris Tetleroyd, Adam Smyth, Sofia and Boris Gurman. (Composite: Times of Israel; Images: Courtesy/social media, used in accordance with Clause 27a of the Copyright Law) “It wasn’t a Russian event per se, but the Chabad House that hosted the event has a very strong Russian connection,” Maylis said. “Rabbi Eli Schlanger [the Chabad rabbi killed at the attack] wasn’t Russian himself, but he did a lot with our community and was very much a part of it.”


'Damn it, wake up!': Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu says Anthony Albanese ignored warnings on terror ahead of Bondi massacre
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of ignoring his warnings on antisemitism, saying "the writing was on the wall", and implored him to "wake up".

In an exclusive interview with Sky News, Mr Netanyahu said the Bondi terror attack could have been prevented and victims like 10-year-old Matilda would still be alive had the Jewish community been allowed to have armed security to protect themselves.

He also urged Albanese to stop the pro-Palestinian hate marches, act on intelligence and crack down on radical Islamist cells.

Speaking early on Friday morning, Mr Netanyahu said the terror attack was inevitable given the Albanese government's lack of action.

"It was bound to reach these tragic outcomes, just as I warned Prime Minister Albanese," he said.

"In my letter to Prime Minister Albanese a few months ago I stated clearly you’re going to have this uptick, it’s going to happen, there’s no question about it.

"I say now to the Australian government, damn it, wake up! You don’t need any more warnings, you’ve already received enough.

"It may be late in the game but better late than never. There’s time for action now. I hope there’s action now because there certainly wasn’t up until now."

Mr Netanyahu said the Albanese government’s premature recognition of a Palestinian state rewarded the savage murder of Jews, which encouraged attacks against the community it Australia.

"The message that was heard by this action was kill Jews, you’ll get rewarded," he said.

He also urged for greater scrutiny of the immigration program, along with radical individuals and organisations already in Australia.

The Israeli Prime Minister said it was essential for the Jewish community to be able to protect itself with armed guards.

Mr Netanyahu said terrorists look for places where Jews are vulnerable and that was why the alleged gunmen chose Bondi Beach.
EXCLUSIVE: Netanyahu pleads for Australia to ‘Wake up’



Australian Officials Confirm Bondi Beach Hanukkah Attacks 'Motivated by Islamic State Ideology'
Australian prime minister Anthony Albanese and the country's Federal Police commissioner confirmed that the Bondi Beach gunmen who targeted a Hanukkah celebration were motivated by ISIS.

Albanese said the mass shooting was "motivated by Islamic State ideology," while Federal Police commissioner Krissy Barrett called it a "terrorist attack inspired by the Islamic State."

The attack, committed by father and son Sajid and Naveed Akram, left 15 people dead, including a 10-year-old girl and a Holocaust survivor.

Albanese said authorities found two ISIS flags in the attackers' car, as well as homemade explosive devices. One flag was displayed on the car's hood. Both terrorists traveled to an area of the southern Philippines, known as "a hotbed for Islamic militants," for nearly the whole month of November to receive "military-style training," the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

Australian authorities in 2019 investigated Naveed Akram for his ties to ISIS but determined he wasn't a threat. A source told the BBC that Akram was "closely connected" to Isaac el Matari, the self-proclaimed leader of the Islamic State in Australia, who was sentenced in 2021 for planning a terrorist attack. Sajid Akram nevertheless overcame Australia's tough gun laws to obtain authorization to purchase six firearms. The Akrams used those weapons in the terrorist attack.

Albanese has faced criticism for his initial statements on the Hanukkah terrorist attacks, in which he failed to mention Jews, Hanukkah, or anti-Semitism. He eventually called the shooting "a targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Hanukkah."

The prime minister was one of several world leaders who recognized a Palestinian state in September, drawing criticism from President Donald Trump and Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Both leaders warned at the time that the recognition would reward Hamas and its allies for its Oct. 7, 2023, attack on Israel.


Call Me Back: The Vilification of World Jewry - with Yossi Klein Halevi & Donniel Hartman
This morning I listened to the latest episode of For Heaven’s Sake—another Ark Media podcast co-hosted by Donniel Hartman and Yossi Klein Halevi—and it immediately struck me as a must-listen for the Call me Back audience.

In this episode, Donniel and Yossi offer a thoughtful reflection on the uncertain future of Diaspora Jewry at this moment. I found myself returning to this conversion, wrestling with the difficult questions it raised. I leave the rest to Yossi and Donniel, and please don’t forget to subscribe to For Heaven’s Sake.




‘Not accountable’: ABC ‘stands by’ Laura Tingle’s ‘contemptuous’ comments on Bondi attack
Sky News Digital Editor Jack Houghton wrote to the ABC over Laura Tingle’s comments that the Bondi attack was not religiously motivated.

“I personally wrote to Hugh Marks and Justin Stevens, who are the two leaders that are responsible for this Laura Tingle mess,” Mr Houghton told Sky News host Rita Panahi.

“The ABC communications team wrote back to me, and they stood by it.

“The podcast is still live.”


‘Running scared’: The purely political reason PM is avoiding funerals after Bondi massacre
Anthony Albanese was right not to attend Matilda’s funeral - and that is a disgrace.

The youngest victim of the Bondi massacre was laid to rest on Thursday.

While every death from Sunday was an incomprehensible tragedy, Matilda’s stands out.

Not only was she just 10 years old, but who was not moved by her name coming from her parent’s excitement to create their lives in Australia?

Matilda, the most Australian name they could think of.

What a symbol for what we lost on Sunday - the hope of Jewish immigrants gone.

Of all the funerals for Albanese to go to, that was the most important.

But our Prime Minister was not among the mourners.

The leader of our country was not there to lend his support to the grieving family.

In fact, he was in Canberra.

Finally announcing his full support for Jillian Segal’s report on combating antisemitism - getting around to it six months after receiving it - and attempting to change the conversation by promising hate speech law reform and boosted powers to cancel visas.

But if I were his advisor I would not have let him go to the funeral.

The first reason I wouldn’t have - tiny in the grand scheme of things, but important to Albanese - is political.

The image of Scott Morrison being snubbed for a handshake by exhausted firefighters after the “I don’t hold a hose” disaster comment came to define the last year of his Prime Ministership.

We’re way past snubbed handshakes when it comes to Albanese and Australia’s Jewish community.

So far this week we have seen Tony Burke heckled while visiting the Bondi memorial under the cover of darkness. Richard Marles was also heckled by a member of the public in a Sky News interview he did in Geelong.

You need some level of political awareness to be able to recognise Richard Marles, or a shadowed Tony Burke.

You don’t for Anthony Albanese. When he is in public, everyone recognises him instantly.

The next time he finds himself surrounded by a crowd of Jews, whatever happens next will become the defining image of his entire Prime Ministership.

That’s why he spent so little time at the Bondi memorial, barely - if at all - interacting with the public.

And why he preferred to meet Jewish leaders in the highly-controlled environment of the Governor General’s Admiralty House.
'Concerned about his political position': Albanese government ‘very weak’ on antisemitism
Former foreign minister Alexander Downer says the Albanese government has been “very weak” on antisemitism.

Mr Downer told Sky News host Danica De Giorgio the Albanese government has done “nothing” about Islamic extremists.

“Who have been leading a lot of the demonstrations against Israel.”


‘Australian tears’: Anthony Albanese ‘not angry’ about the rise of antisemitism
Political strategist and adviser Yaron Finkelstein discusses the “frustration” felt by Australians in Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s response to the rise of antisemitism.

“If you look behind us, these are not Jewish tears that we’re seeing, these are Australian tears,” Mr Finkelstein told Sky News Australia.

“Are we actually going to fight for this? Are we going to fight to get back what Australia used to be?

“In order to fight, you have to be passionate, and it’s one of the things that people can’t see in the Prime Minister; they actually don’t see him getting angry about this.”


‘WE WERE SITTING DUCKS’: Bondi terror attack survivor recounts horror
A Bondi father shares his terrifying experience as he tried to save his children during the horrific terror attack.


Nicole Lampert: Stab vests and kill drills: The children living in terror of being attacked in British schools
The armed police are outside the school again. Not because of a fight or drugs: it’s more chilling. On the other side of the world, 15 Jewish people have been killed and 40 others are lying in hospital after two gunmen targeted a Hanukkah celebration taking place on Bondi Beach. And that means there’s an increased terror threat to British Jews.

But this is nothing new. Schoolchildren who attend Jewish schools in the UK are now sadly used to several layers of security, which would feel unthinkable to British pupils in other educational establishments. Even before October 7, on average, a Jewish school campus entrance would have two or three trained security guards and a couple of layers of gates or high walls.

Three months after the October 7 attacks, Isis issued its first official statement on the conflict, urging supporters to “strike the Jews wherever you can find them”, and as the threat has increased more and more measures have had to be put in place.

Like other schools, they have fire drills, but from a young age, Jewish children are also trained in how to react to an intruder in their school who has come to kill them. “I remember the first time my daughter told me she’d had a drill,” says Jo*, 53, who works in television and lives in north London. “I didn’t go to a Jewish school, and so I presumed she meant a fire drill. It was November, and I asked her, ‘Did you remember to put your coat on?’ And she said, ‘No mummy, we were inside. We all had to go to the corner of the room and the quietest person got a house point.’ It was then that I realised what this drill was for. She was six years old.”

When the alarm goes off, the youngest children – aged just 4 and 5 – are encouraged to play “sleeping bunnies”. Older children know that “the pupils nearest to the door need to put their desks across it to keep it shut, and then they sit in absolute silence”, adds Jo. “It goes on for about 20 minutes. The drills happen two or three times a year. Whoever makes a noise gets a detention. They know this is serious.”


Anti-Israel Group Urges US Jews Not to Defend Synagogues Against Islamic Terrorists
If Not Now, is an anti-Israel BDS group, whose gimmick is pretending it’s an organization of “Jewish youth.” (In reality, many of its members are not Jewish and it’s a typical far leftist organization.) There was a period when If Not Now pretended that it was something other than a fan club for Hamas or anyone killing Jews.

Then Oct 7 came around and If Not Now issued a statement declaring that, “we cannot and will not say today’s actions by Palestinian militants are unprovoked” and “their blood is on the hands of the Israeli government.”

But after the Chanukah massacre in Sydney, If Not Now popped up again, not just to blame Israel “Benjamin Netanyahu and other demagogues are seeking to exploit these 15 deaths, and our fear and heartbreak, for their own agendas, by offering us an empty promise of Jewish safety through walls, weapons, and repression”, but to reject any kind of communal self-defense or even calling the police.

An essay by ‘Dean’ who claims to be BIJOCSM, (Black, Indigenous, Jews of Color, Sephardi, and Mizrahi), this presumably refers to Dean Gottesman-Solomon who claims to originate from India, declares that after the massacre, “security guards & law enforcement” puts “black and brown” people like him at “risk of physical injury, emotional and mental duress, and possible death” because they “treat brown and black people as a threat” and under Trump “being brown or black is enough of an excuse to tackle you to the ground, cuff you, and disappear you into a prison or detention center”.

Thus, Dean, a member of a vicious anti-Israel hate group, whines that “as a Brown Jewish man, I am afraid to even walk near a synagogue, let alone go into one, at a time like this.”

Dean looks like an Indian hipster, nothing like George Floyd, and yet insists on playing the victim even while Jews were being murdered by the people his hate group runs cover for.

“Keep in mind those of us who do not benefit from the so-called ‘protection’ of armed security guards and police officers,” Dean whines and then urges Jews worried about being murdered in synagogues “to seek alternative solutions, such as community safety initiatives, such as Community Violence Intervention teams trained in non-violence de-escalation tactics or Community Mediation Centers to resolve conflict & disagreemens.”

In short when heavily armed Muslim terrorists come calling, call a social worker, but don’t try to protect yourselves or fight back.


Muslim Bondi Beach hero who disarmed terrorist branded a ‘traitor’ in Arab media for saving Jewish lives: report
The heroic Syrian-Australian man who disarmed one of the terrorists firing at a crowd of Hanukkah revelers at Australia’s Bondi Beach has been slammed as a traitor by many Palestinian commenters for saving Jewish lives, according to a new report.

After the West Bank-based Ramallah News outlet shared a story about the life-saving actions taken by Ahmed al Ahmed, 43, many of the outlet’s readers trashed the Muslim hero and prayed that he would not recover from his serious injuries, according to an analysis by the Israeli-based Palestinian Media Watch (PMW).

While Ahmed’s heroism served as a “feel-good story” for most of the world, shining a light on the tragic events of Sunday’s massacre, at least 75% of more than 1,000 comments on the Ramallah News post were hostile, Ahron Shapiro, an Australian and senior researcher for PMW, told The Australian.

“I wish (the bullet) hit your heart,” one commenter said.

“May Allah not heal you,” another person wrote.

One Facebook user went on to accuse Ahmed of selling out his life “for the safety of Jews,” with another slamming him for stopping the murderous actions of another Muslim man, Sajid Akram, one of the accused shooters.

“May God send you a disease that has no cure,” one the posts read.

Many posts echoed calls for Ahmed to die and suffer eternal damnation for his actions, with others going so far as to question his faith and label him “an atheist” who only stopped the gunman for financial reward.

Others also opted to spread unfounded conspiracy theories that the mass shooting in Australia was orchestrated by Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.

Of the more than 1,000 comments on the story, only 20% were supportive of Ahmed, calling him a hero who stood by the true guidance of Islam to defend his fellow man.


Australian Police Foil New Suspected Terror Plot Days After Bondi Beach Attack
Australian police carried out a counterterror operation in a Sydney suburb on Thursday, intercepting two vehicles and detaining seven men after receiving intelligence that a violent act was possibly being planned.

New South Wales police said tactical officers stopped the vehicles in the southwest suburb of Liverpool, about 30 minutes from Bondi Beach, and emphasized they had not identified a direct connection to the recent terror attack at the beach, according to CBS News. Police said they were responding "to information received that a violent act was possibly being planned."

The vehicles had been traveling from the city of Melbourne and were heading towards Bondi Beach, authorities said. Though the men were detained, no arrests were announced. Police added that they believed there was no ongoing threat to the public.

The counterterrorism operation comes four days after the terror attack at Bondi Beach that killed 15 people, including a 10-year-old girl and a Holocaust survivor, at a Hanukkah celebration. Australian officials have confirmed the shooting was motivated by Islamic State ideology, citing evidence including ISIS flags recovered from the suspects’ vehicle and their prior extremist associations.




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