Friday, December 19, 2025

12/19 Links Pt1: Howard Jacobson: Shtetl grit and Jewish self-belief; Australia declares day in honor of Bondi Beach attack victims; Suspect in Brown/MIT murders found dead

From Ian:

Howard Jacobson: Shtetl grit and Jewish self-belief
I have promised myself not to be political, which is hard given the last two years, never mind last four days, but allow me to ask an almost political question: Have we Jews gained as much as we have lost by kicking off the mud of the shtetl? To my eye, Jews have looked a little adrift of late, dismayed and baffled in proportion to the degree that they are — I won’t say assimilated – but acculturated or, if you prefer, un-shtetled. The apple can fall too far from the tree.

My father’s Manchester shtetl friends put on their wartime medals and went out onto the street to take the fight to Oswald Moseley. My father claimed he once breached a police cordon and got close enough to Moseley to throw a punch at him. Only Moseley’s horse, rearing back, saved its rider from a bloody nose. Whether it’s true that my father knocked out the horse I don’t know. But it’s a good joke, whether it happened or not. When people asked if he was sorry for the horse, he shrugged his shoulders. In his view Moseley’s horse was antisemitic by association.

Leaving Manchester means learning to see the horse’s point of view.

Well, we have all moved on. Leaving Manchester is a metaphor for loss. Shtetl vitality is no more. We no longer risk the jokes we once made for fear of giving offence. The refined are frightened of their own shadows and the intelligentsia I longed to join have turned out to be gullible fools.

We light the Chanukah candles in memory of a miracle that occurred 3,000 years ago, but we are careful not to rejoice too openly in our victory. Modern historians question the miracle of the oil, remind us that not every Jew was on the side of the Maccabees – ‘Not in my name,’ some of them chanted — and find a hundred other faults with the story. As though there are any stories that don’t exaggerate or distort. You don’t think all I’ve told you about Manchester is true, do you?

What matters is that we recall a vigorous version of our past, because without such past we have no vigorous present.

We survive because we believed in a God who, so long as we fought for who we were, wouldn’t let the oil run out.

May there never be a time when we grow too sophisticated and self-doubting, too cowed and apologetic, to do as the Maccabees did and stand firm against those who want to see the back of us.
Australia declares day in honor of Bondi Beach attack victims
The Federal and New South Wales governments have declared Sunday, December 21, as a day of reflection in order to honor the victims of the Bondi Beach mass shooting, announced Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in a press conference early Friday.

Albanese went on to say that intelligence has confirmed that the Bondi Beach attack was ISIS-inspired.

He also announced that Australia will launch a national gun buyback scheme in the wake of the attack, declaring that "we expect hundreds of thousands of firearms will be collected and destroyed through this scheme."

The buyback would be similar to gun reforms introduced soon after the massacre in 1996 in Tasmania's Port Arthur after a lone gunman killed 35 people, which prompted authorities to implement some of the world's toughest gun laws.

"Australia's gun laws were last substantially reformed in the wake of the Port Arthur tragedy. The terrible events at Bondi show we need to get more guns off our streets," Albanese said during a media briefing.

An estimated four million firearms are currently in the country, Albanese said. The government would target surplus, newly banned, and illegal firearms, with the costs to be shared between the federal and state governments, he said.

Following the Port Arthur massacre, Australia announced a gun buy-back scheme and secured the surrender of about 640,000 prohibited firearms nationwide.

Neighboring New Zealand announced sweeping gun reforms, including gun buyback schemes, after the Christchurch terror attack in 2019.


Suspect in both Brown University shooting and murder of MIT physicist found dead
A man suspected in the fatal shootings at Brown University and of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor has been found dead in a New Hampshire storage facility after a five-day search that spanned several New England states, authorities said Thursday.

Claudio Neves Valente, 48, a former Brown student and Portuguese national, was found dead Thursday evening from a self-inflicted gunshot wound, said Col. Oscar Perez, the Providence police chief. Perez said that as far as investigators know, Neves Valente acted alone.

Investigators believe he is responsible for both the shooting at Brown and the killing of a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor two days later at his Brookline home, nearly 50 miles (80 kilometers) away, US attorney for Massachusetts, Leah B. Foley said.

Two students were killed and nine were wounded in the shooting Saturday in a Brown University lecture hall. The investigation had shifted on Thursday when authorities said they were looking into a connection between the Brown attack and the fatal shooting of 47-year-old MIT professor Nuno F.G. Loureiro. (Contrary to reports in other Israeli and Jewish publications, Loureiro was not Jewish.)

Brown University President Christina Paxson said Neves Valente was enrolled at Brown from the fall of 2000 to the spring of 2001. He was admitted to the graduate school to study physics beginning in September 2000. “He has no current affiliation with the university,” she said.

Valente and Loureiro attended the same academic program at a university in Portugal between 1995 and 2000, Foley said. Loureiro graduated from the physics program at Instituto Superior Técnico, Portugal’s premier engineering school, in 2000, according to his MIT faculty page. The same year, Neves Valente was let go from a position at the Lisbon university, according to an archive of a termination notice from the school’s then-president in February 2000.

Neves Valente had studied at Brown on an F1 visa. He eventually obtained legal permanent residence status in September 2017, Foley said. His last known residence was in Miami.

US President Donald Trump suspended on Thursday the green card lottery program that allowed Neves Valente into the US.


An open letter to Australian PM Albanese, after Bondi Beach shooting
Underlying all this was your government’s delusion that what happened on October 7 was essentially a clash between moral equals, and that its antagonists’ conflict was distant from Australia’s shores. They weren’t equal, and it wasn’t distant.

As events on your own streets made plain, the conflict was not about nationalism, as your actions suggested, but about jihadism. That’s what demonstrators on your soil meant when they shouted “Muhammad’s army will return,” and that’s what “globalize the intifada” and “from the river to the sea” mean. It’s certainly what Hamas meant when it ordered babies beheaded and women raped.

And the jihadists knew you a lot better than you knew them. They knew they could use you and your colleagues as useful idiots. They are progressives, they said of you, we will tell them Israel is fighting innocent freedom seekers, victims of colonialism, imperialism, apartheid, genocide, misogyny, homophobia, global warming – you name it, they’ll buy it. And buy it they did.

The people who – in front of your eyes – were targeting our children, and did so from behind their own children, deliberately, as a strategy, were actually accusing us of doing what they themselves were doing, and you never called their lie.

Listen well, Anthony: that’s how it started in Europe. Antisemites marched in the streets, synagogues were torched, and Jews were shamed, boycotted, and accused. The accusations were absurd, but the free world refused to fight for its values – not politically, certainly not militarily, not even rhetorically.

It all happened in broad daylight, but the free world did nothing – not because it agreed with the antisemites, but because it refused to believe it had an enemy, an enemy that would settle for nothing less than war, the war over the free world’s life.

Freedom’s enemies knew this, and that calculation is what made them use the Jews as their Armageddon warm-up act. Targeting the Jews, they knew, would keep the free world sedated while its enemies consolidated their power and prepared for the real war, the apocalypse they were determined to unleash.

That is jihadism’s current ploy. That is how you became its hostage, and your country its stage. And that is the enemy you must now help unmask, target, and defeat.

There are, of course, many differences between what happened in my grandparents’ Europe and what happened between your Australia and our war. The biggest difference is that this time the Jews are fighting back. That is why the mobs you faced were not out to change any Israeli policy, as your actions implied, but to deny us Israelis’ right to fight. On the battlefield, they told themselves, Israel defeats us, but with Australians like you, we might defeat them from the rear.

Now, as you stare at 15 bodies in your own living room, it’s not too late for you to change course, and tell your people six words – Australia is at war, with jihadism – and the rest of civilization another six words: we are all in this together.

In between these statements, you can say two words to us Israelis, especially to those of us who have spent a lifetime fighting for peace: forgive me.
Editor's Notes: Bondi Beach attack shatters Australians' illusions that 'it doesn't happen here'
‘This doesn’t happen in Australia.”

The sentence arrived in waves, from stunned community leaders in Sydney to ordinary people who sounded like they had just discovered gravity. It showed up in messages, headlines, and the tone of phone calls that began with silence and ended with disbelief. It became a mantra, a defense mechanism, a desperate attempt to tape reality back together.

On Sunday, the entire Jerusalem Post staff followed and reported on the deadly terrorist attack at Bondi Beach, a Sydney suburb, while Jews were lighting the first candle of Hanukkah. That detail matters. Terror always chooses its stage carefully. A beach, a public celebration, a holiday that is literally about bringing light into darkness. The attackers did not just target people; they targeted visibility.

There was another strange layer to it, one that journalists do not talk about enough. The phone calls. The calls from abroad. The calls that usually come to Israel after an attack, when someone wants to check if “you are okay” and then ask, gently, what it is like to live like that.

This time, the tables turned
This time, my colleagues and I were the ones explaining how the first hours feel, how the body does not understand what the brain is trying to process, how anger and helplessness take turns like kids fighting over a toy. The same questions surfaced, the same shocked pacing around the same rooms; only the accents were different.

Some Israelis have learned to live with terror the way people learn to live with humidity. They do not enjoy it. They do not accept it. They just learn how to function when it returns. That does not make anyone “stronger”; it just makes the soul develop scar tissue. Watching Australia experience that moment, on the first night of Hanukkah, felt like watching a country publicly lose a kind of innocence in real time.

For Australia, this attack was a turning point. Not because antisemitism was absent before – it was not – but because there are “before” moments and “after” moments in the life of a community. France had one in 2012 with the attack at the Ozar Hatorah Jewish school in Toulouse. The US had one in 2018 with the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh. In both cases, there had been incidents before, ugly ones, sometimes violent ones, but nothing that smashed through the national story the way those did.

The national story is always the same: “That’s not us.”

Then it becomes: “It happened, but it’s not a trend.”

Then, eventually, it becomes: “What do they do now?”

Bondi Beach was Australia’s collision with that progression.

The news from Sydney threw me back to 2012.

I was a boots-on-the-ground reporter then, covering an event in Paris, when word began to spread about a shooting at a Jewish school in Toulouse in the south of France. The early reports were confused, the numbers unclear, the names trickling in like poison. I remember the speed of the decision. Train. Bag. Notebook. Phone. Go.

A few hours later, I was standing at a school I knew too well. Years earlier, I had served as an emissary for the World Zionist Organization in that same school. I slept there for a night, prayed with the students and staff, and ate with them. I knew the feeling of being inside those walls, the feeling of being protected by community and also boxed in by the knowledge of why the protection exists.
Bondi Beach terror attack: Man who ran toward shooting to try and help fights for life
A man who moved towards the Bondi gunman instead of fleeing remains fighting for his life after being shot.

Gefen Bitton, 30, had been referred to as the ‘man in a red T-shirt’ after he was seen in footage from Sunday’s attack near the footbridge running to help Ahmed Al Ahmed as he disarmed alleged gunman Sajid Akram.

Bitton, an Israeli national who has been working in Australia for about three years as a garage door technician, was attending the Chanukah by the Sea event, his friend Tom Cohen told 7NEWS.com.au.

He had been looking forward to watching the ceremonial lighting of the menorah when the shooting began.

As gunfire rang out, another friend of Bitton’s stood up and ran, but seconds later realised the 30-year-old was not with him.

Moments later his sister in Israel then received a phone call from Bitton saying he had been shot.

She alerted his friends in Sydney, who began desperately searching for him, before eventually finding him at St Vincent’s Hospital, initially listed as an unidentified patient.

He remains in intensive care after undergoing multiple surgeries.

In the days that followed, friends recognised Bitton in footage that showed him attempting to help, but was allegedly shot by Naveed Akram.

Friends believe Bitton’s decision to run back toward the bridge also explains why his phone and keys were later found closer to the gunman than where he had been sitting moments earlier.


FreePress: Bondi Beach: Why the West Can't Solve Islamist Terrorism

Uncle of murdered Rabbi and survivor of U.S. shooting speaks out | 9 News Australia
Rabbi Yisroel Goldstein, a survivor of the 2019 shooting of a Californian synagogue, was horrified to learn out his nephew, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, had been killed in the devastating Bondi Beach Terror Attack.

9News U.S. Correspondent Jonathan Kearsley spoke to Rabbi Goldstein, who reflected on the similarities between the two violent attacks and called for antisemitism to be tackled head-on by world leaders.


4 more victims of Bondi Hanukkah attack laid to rest, including couple that tackled terrorist
Four people killed in the antisemitic terror attack in Sydney on Sunday were laid to rest Friday, including a couple who were shot dead after tackling one of the two terrorists who killed 15 people and wounded dozens at the Hanukkah candle-lighting event on Bondi Beach.

Boris and Sofia Gurman were buried at the Chevra Kadisha in Woollahra, and Edith Brutman and Boris Tetleroyd were buried at the Rookwood Cemetery in Lidcombe, according to local media.

Senior Sydney Rabbi Yehoram Ulman, whose son-in-law Rabbi Eli Schlanger was also killed in the terror attack, led all four funerals on Friday.

“Yesterday we buried a 10-year-old girl; it’s been years since I’ve seen two coffins next to each other,” said Ulman at the Gurmans’ funeral.

“Boris and Sofia were taken from us, not just because they were Jewish, but fighting for being Jewish,” said Ulman.

Ulman, who, like the Gurmans, was born in the Soviet Union, read aloud a statement by their son Alex, who was wounded in the attack.

“If you were lucky enough to know Sofia and Boris, you didn’t just know them, you felt their presence in your life,” the statement said. It described how Sofia, 61, and Boris, 69, left Ukraine after Alex was born.

“They started from ground zero in Sydney, in a new country with a new language, and a completely new life. They bought their first house in Bondi, and over time, Sydney became their home.”

The Guardian reported that Ulman wept as he described how Alex expressed concern that his parents were distant from their Jewish faith.

“You thought your parents were very far from Judaism, you told me. But I will tell you, they were closer than all of us,” he said.

Speaking later at the funeral for Brutman, who was vice president of the New South Wales branch of B’nai Brith, Ulman said Brutman, 68, was “charitable in every way,” the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported.

“And she did it with love, with devotion and without being asked,” said Ulman.

“Edith wasn’t just a part of our lives; she was a very, very vocal part of our lives. But her love, her loyalty, her devotion, was really unique in every way,” he said.
Air traffic stopped to enable tribute to Bondi victim
Like most Australians, Moishe Gordon watched the horrific footage of the Bondi terror attack in Sydney. When he realised the man filmed fighting the terrorists with a brick, before being critically injured and gunned down, was his friend, Reuven Morrison, the shock was immense.

But it did not feel out of character with the person he knew. “I saw him as man of action,” Gordon says. “He saw a need for the Russian community in Sydney, and he never just said, I’ll let someone else do the hard yakka. He was the one that went to the council. He got the permits. He got the architect. He got a new synagogue for the Russian community in Sydney. So, when he saw his community in Sydney [at Chanukah at the Sea] was threated, why the hell wouldn’t he take direct action? He looked after the spiritual and he looked after the physical. That was in his DNA.”

We are going to stop the international flights coming into Sydney airport, because we want you to do a circuit for your friend

In the days following Reuven’s murder, Gordon learned that Reuven was to be driven from Sydney to Melbourne for burial, where his wife, daughter and grandchildren live. The journey would take around 15 hours.

“I was so upset for him, that he was stuck in the refrigerator in the coroners for three days. As Jews, we like to bury on the day of the petirah [death]. When I saw that he was stuck in the coroner’s refrigerator, if I could make him comfortable, and save him the 15-hour drive home, I immediately thought: I am going to do it.”

Gordon has been flying planes as a hobby for more than 30 years. For over a decade, he volunteered with Angel Flight, transporting Australians from regional and rural areas to city hospitals. But this was different. He had never transported a body before, and this time, it was his friend.

He called the engineers who manage the hangar where his private plane is kept in Melbourne and asked them to remove four of the six seats in his plane to make space.

“I let my engineers know that I wanted to use my plane to bring my friend back from Sydney. I wanted to remove all the seats, and when the engineers heard the reason for this unexpected flight, without me asking, and without my knowledge, they put anchor points on the floor of my airplane, and bought brand new strappings, at no charge to me so we could transport the body with greater dignity. All they wanted to do was ensure that Reuven was properly secured on his flight back from Sydney to Melbourne.”

Gordon was stunned.

“When I asked them why they had done that, they said, they had just wanted to. These Australians cared. They really wanted to see Reuven looked after.”

Later that evening, when Gordon landed at Bankstown Airport, something else unexpected happened.

“I have been to Bankstown airport before, but I have never had an air marshal that marshalled me into a particular spot. I was a little surprised. Then, after I landed, the air marshal rushed up to me next to my plane window, and he says ‘we have been waiting for you for over 3 hours, we have arranged a private hanger, so you can transport your friend with dignity and privacy. I couldn’t believe it,’” Gordon says, his voice breaking. The air marshals had heard about his sacred mission and wanted to support Reuven’s flight home.

Grateful and relieved that their beloved father and husband would soon be coming home for burial in Melbourne, the Morrison family made one final request: a flyover of Bondi, a place Reuven loved.

Ordinarily, it would not have been possible. Sydney’s airspace is tightly controlled. The wind that day made a circuit unsafe.

“The day Reuven was released from the coroner, the day he was coming to be picked up, the wind was coming in the worst direction for me to do a circuit over Bondi,” says Gordon, assuming that despite the family’s request, it could not be done.

“I said to the air traffic controller in Syndey who called me, I appreciate your effort. I tried my best, but it wasn’t possible. But then he said to me: Moishe, we are going to make it happen. We are going to stop the international flights coming into Sydney airport, because we want you to do a circuit for your friend.”

After air traffic was halted, Gordon flew two slow circuits over Bondi with Reuven on board.


Bondi massacre survivor recalls how she shielded two kids during horrific attack
Bondi massacre survivor Chaya sits down with Sky News host Sharri Markson to discuss her experience and how she shielded two children using her own body.




Governor-General: 'Many people telling me I should sack government'
Governor-General Sam Mostyn reacts to the public outrage following the Bondi Beach terror attack.

“There are many people who are calling out to me … telling me that I should sack governments,” Ms Mostyn told Sky News Australia.

“That I should have sacked governments before.”


WE DON'T WANT YOUR MONEY: Rabbi reveals AGONY after brother was shot and ‘lucky to be alive’
I’ve known Rabbi Pinny Super for years. This isn’t an abstract tragedy. This is close. This is family. I spoke with him outside the Bondi Pavilion, metres from where the Chanukah gathering was turned into a horrific crime scene




California mayor urged to resign for spreading antisemitic Bondi Beach conspiracies
The Jewish Community Relations Council of the Bay Area is calling for the resignation of a local mayor who reposted conspiracy theories to his LinkedIn account that claimed the Bondi Beach attack on a Hanukkah celebration was a “false flag” perpetrated by Israel.

“When an elected official’s words and actions make a segment of the community feel unsafe and abandoned by their government, that official can no longer effectively serve,” the group said in a statement.

“For these reasons, Mayor Eduardo Martinez must resign,” the statement continued. “No community should be led by someone whose conduct contributes to fear, division, and exclusion. This is a stark example of where toxic social media, unchecked rhetoric, and the constant demonization of Israel and Jews can lead—and why it must be confronted.”

Martinez, 76, is the mayor of Richmond, California, a city north of Berkeley that is home to one Reform congregation, Temple Beth Hillel. Elected in 2022, he has been a longtime and vocal critic of Israel.

It is unusual for a Jewish group to call for the resignation of a local elected official. But Martinez’s rhetoric about the Bondi Beach attack, the JCRC said, was “dangerously antisemitic, deeply offensive, and wholly unacceptable.”

Following the attack in Sydney that left 15 killed and dozens injured, Martinez reposted several antisemitic sentiments and conspiracy theories on his LinkedIn page.

“The root cause of antisemitism is the behaviour of Israel & Israelis,” read one since-deleted post shared by Martinez, according to J. The Jewish News of Northern California.

Another post shared by Martinez compared the Bondi celebration with hypothetical Hanukkah displays at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem, writing that both should be seen as “performative assertions of dominance.”

The post continued: “Hanukkah, traditionally a time of personal and private reflection, has in recent years been appropriated by Jewish Zionist organisations and weaponised as a political tool.” In his repost, Martinez commented, “What are your thoughts?”
SF area mayor apologizes for sharing antisemitic posts, says Netanyahu causing rise in Jew-hatred
Eduardo Martinez, mayor of Richmond, Calif., in the San Francisco Bay Area, believes that having apologized for sharing anti-Israel material on social media, the matter ought to be closed.

“I retracted my mistakes. I own them,” he told JNS on Thursday afternoon. “I was hoping that people would listen to me with compassion and understanding, but apparently that doesn’t seem to be the way in the world.”

The mayor said that he had reached out to the local rabbi for a “heart-to-heart.” JNS asked which rabbi, and Martinez said that he didn’t recall the name.

JNS spoke to Martinez after Chaya Leah Sufrin, a podcaster, publicized two LinkedIn posts, in which the mayor shared other people’s posts referring to the “behavior of Israel and Israelis” as the “root cause of antisemitism” and suggesting, in the context of the antisemitic mass shooting in Sydney, that Chanukah was being “appropriated by Jewish Zionist organizations and weaponized as a political tool.”

The Jewish Community Relations Council Bay Area called for the mayor to resign.

In a phone conversation, which ran about 15 minutes and during which Martinez repeatedly asked a JNS reporter what his personal views were on the matter, the mayor said that he had “misread” the posts that he shared on LinkedIn.

“That’s what I saw, but it did not say that,” he told JNS. “Netanyahu and his disregard for human life is causing an increase in antisemitism, especially when he conflates Zionism with Judaism.”

The JCRC stated that the mayor “has posted repeatedly on LinkedIn spreading false conspiracies blaming Jews for the Bondi Beach terror attack,” and that “such rhetoric is dangerously antisemitic, deeply offensive and wholly unacceptable—particularly coming from a sitting mayor.”

The Jewish group also shared other posts it said were from Martinez, including one that asked if the alleged shooter in the Bondi Beach attack was a former Israeli soldier, and another calling the massacre “Israel’s false flag attack.”

The JCRC said that the mayor’s recent behavior “does not exist in isolation.”

“Earlier this year, Mayor Martinez spoke at a conference in Detroit where he compared himself to Hamas and wore a hat that read ‘DDTTIDF,’ an acronym calling for ‘death, death to the Israel Defense Forces,’” it said. Just two weeks after Oct. 7, Martinez “led Richmond to become the first city in the United States to pass a resolution calling for a ceasefire without including any condemnation of Hamas,” it added.
Seven men released after dramatic arrests in Liverpool
The seven men detained in Liverpool on Thursday afternoon, who were believed to be heading to Bondi, have been released without charge.

The decision came after NSW Police initially fearing the possibility of a "violent offence" before the group were arrested.

NSW Police told SkyNews.com.au all seven men, aged between 19 and 24, were released from custody on Friday.

"There is no immediate safety risk to the community," a police statement said.

"Investigations will continue to review all available evidence and an investigation into the matter remains ongoing."

The group were suspected of harbouring "radical ideologies", but were released on Friday afternoon after counter terrorism police detained them in a dramatic, broad daylight operation on a busy road.

The men, believed to be bound for Bondi, were intercepted by counter terrorism police in Liverpool, southwest Sydney, on Thursday afternoon.

It is understood one of the men was under an active ASIO investigation, while another was known to intelligence agencies.

Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon told a press conference on Friday that authorities feared there could have been a “violent offence”, driven by “radical Islamist extremism” ideologies.

"I can say that the potential of a violent offence being committed was such that we were not prepared to tolerate the risk and interdict accordingly," he said.

However, Commissioner Lanyon said “the justification for their ongoing detention no longer exists subject to a review of evidence”.

There will be no restrictions placed on their movements.
Victor Davis Hanson: Antisemitism Must Be Confronted Before Any Islamophobia Investigations
The problem with the Bondi Beach shooting “was not guns.” Rather, it was “letting people into the country whose culture is antithetical to the tradition and norms of that society.”

Victor Davis Hanson suggests “that there’s no need to investigate Islamophobia until” antisemitism is “eliminated” because that’s “a much greater problem, statistically.”

“If I say something negative about the Quran or Islam or the Muslim community, I might be hurt if I say something. And if I call a Jews’ name, you think a Jewish terrorist is going to kill me? No. Is it antisemitism? Yes. The ancient curse of Europe,” argues Hanson on Thursday’s edition of Victor Davis Hanson: In His Own Words:”


UK police chief warns ‘people are celebrating Bondi attack’
UK police are investigating claims people in Manchester "celebrated" the Bondi Beach alleged terror attack.

The city's chief constable said the force received reports of "sickeningly distasteful" gestures in the wake of Sunday's massacre, which left 15 dead.

Greater Manchester Police and the Metropolitan Police have vowed to arrest pro-Palestinian activists making chants such as "globalise the intifada".

Two people were killed and a further three were injured in a violent attack outside Heaton Park Hebrew Congregation synagogue in Manchester back in October.

GMP chief constable Sir Stephen Watson declared "the terrorist threat is worse" than before the war in Gaza.

"I know that I had reports that there were people in Manchester celebrating the Bondi attack in ways which is just sickeningly distasteful," he told an event hosted by the Police Exchange think tank.

"It seems to me that we need to get to the heart of that, we need to get behind that, because there is stuff which is lawful, but it is intolerable, and what is intolerable can, over time, become unlawful — and that’s where politicians come in.

"The number of atrocities and the efficacy, to use a loaded word, of those atrocities has got worse … The intolerable has become normalised, and has almost become accepted as the way that things are."

In a joint statement, GMP and the Met declared they will "act decisively" and arrest those making chants.

"The two recent terror attacks targeting Jews, the increased fear in Jewish communities, and high number of terrorist attacks disrupted in recent years requires an enhanced response," Commissioner Sir Mark Rowley and Constable Watson said.

"The words and chants used, especially in protests, matter and have real world consequences. We have consistently been advised by the CPS that many of the phrases causing fear in Jewish communities don’t meet prosecution thresholds. Now, in the escalating threat context, we will recalibrate to be more assertive.

"We know communities are concerned about placards and chants such as 'globalise the intifada' and those using it at future protest or in a targeted way should expect the Met and GMP to take action.

"Violent acts have taken place, the context has changed - words have meaning and consequence. We will act decisively and make arrests."


‘Cut out the biased reporting’: Daughter of Bondi victim calls out ABC on their own show
Sky News Digital Editor Jack Houghton has claimed anger at the ABC has reached “unprecedented levels” after the daughter of a victim of the Bondi attacks asked the broadcaster to 'cut out the biased reporting' on their own show.


‘We have to be clear’: ABC blasted for ‘dancing around the mulberry bush’ with Tingle's comment
Liberal Senator Alex Antic claims Laura Tingle’s 'nothing to do with religion' comment about the Bondi Beach massacre is “dancing around the mulberry bush.”

“We don’t need our broadcasters trying to find ways around saying what we need to say,” Mr Antic told Sky News host Rowan Dean.

“That means we've got to look to the future in terms of how we have imported this problem.”




Andrew Lawrence: Cultural enrichment at Bondi Beach...

Bondi Beach attack - why do they ALWAYS ignore Islam and blame the "far-right"? The worst reactions.
The Bondi Beach attack was shocking for how predictable it seemed. The same day as the attack we saw another Hannukah celebration threatened in Amsterdam, an Islamic terror attack on a Christmas market foiled in Germany, and calls in Britain to ‘globalise the intifada’.

You'd think it would be pretty clear by now what the problem is.

But no - politicians still bleat about "far right extremism", fret about a rise in Islamophobia and rush to spotlight a “Muslim hero” while downplaying the identity of the attackers.

In this video I look at the establishment reaction; the claims that it had “nothing to do with Islam,” the immediate pivot to blaming Israel, generic "antisemitism" or conspiracy-brained “false flag” comments, and how the aftermath is already being used to push the usual crackdowns on speech and gun ownership, while the underlying problem goes untouched.




‘From the river to the sea’ chant is antisemitic, says France’s human rights envoy
Some chants routinely heard at anti-Israel, pro-Palestinian protests around the world are antisemitic, said France’s human rights ambassador, two days after 15 people were killed in a shooting attack at a Sydney Hanukkah event.

“‘From the river to the sea.’ We consider that to have an antisemitic purpose,” Isabelle Lonvis-Rome told The Times of Israel during an interview in Jaffa. “That’s clear.”

Lonvis-Rome, whose remit includes the fight against antisemitism and perpetuating the memory of the Holocaust, was in Israel to represent France at the Jerusalem Plenary of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance at Yad Vashem, which Israel currently heads.

Antisemitism has skyrocketed worldwide, including in France, since Hamas launched its war against Israel on October 7, 2023.

Antisemitic acts in France nearly quadrupled in 2024, with 1,570 incidents recorded, or 62 percent of all religious hate crimes in the country, according to the Jewish organization Conseil Représentatif des Institutions Juives de France (CRIF).

Of these, 65% included violent aggression against people, and over 10% were physical assaults. This surge has created a climate where French Jews increasingly feel the need to hide their identity, such as by removing mezuzahs from homes or changing their names online, the report said.

Antisemitism in France increasingly targets students, with the Ministry of National Education reporting a 420% increase in antisemitic acts in schools during the 2023-2024 school year. Surveys show that 64% of the French population believes Jews have reason to fear living in France, the report noted.

The spike in antisemitism has been accompanied by frequent mass rallies against Israel, often featuring calls like “Globalize the intifada” and “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.”

“What is sure is that to attack the existence of the state of Israel is antisemitic,” said Lonvis-Rome. “When we speak about anti-Zionism, I prefer to say very clearly, it’s forbidden to attack the existence of the state of Israel.”




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Elder of Ziyon - حـكـيـم صـهـيـون



This blog may be a labor of love for me, but it takes a lot of effort, time and money. For 20 years and 40,000 articles I have been providing accurate, original news that would have remained unnoticed. I've written hundreds of scoops and sometimes my reporting ends up making a real difference. I appreciate any donations you can give to keep this blog going.

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