Bondi Beach terrorist attack

A rise in fake antisemitism to pass hate-speech laws.

Hate speech is recognising a Palestinian state. That’s what gave rise to this crap.

It’s time to just tell them ā€œno, it will never happen.ā€ and… force countries like Egypt and Lebanon to take them in rather that forcing them upon us.

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I agree. This attack isn’t the result of some amorphous ā€œantisemitismā€ concocted to rush through hate-speech laws. It’s more likely a direct result of what’s happening to Palestinian people. It reminds me of the old Russian proverb.

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Exactly. Also correct me if I’m wrong but I’ve never seen terrorist attacks orchestrated by Jewish people on Muslim communities. (And no… winning a war against an islamic terrorist state isn’t considered an act of terrorism.)

I’m not condoning the attacks, and I also don’t agree with them happening on Australian soil. I just don’t like people blaming it on rising ā€œanti-Semitismā€, especially when a lot of that anti-Semitism was proven to fake, and used as a tool to rush through new laws.

There’s anti everything in Australia. Anti Muslim, anti immigration, anti … etc. Sure anti-Semitism exists, along with all the others, I just don’t see it as being Australia’s most pressing issue, or the cause of these shootings.

Obviously it’s a very pressing issue. Just because it doesn’t align with your thinking…..you are hopelessly flailing around with your argument here. Other communities don’t get targeted for mass murder for being X, Y,Z in Australia.

What is different right now is how unevenly these things are treated. As it stands, Muslim groups appear to operate as a protected group in practice. Their protests are widely tolerated, even when rhetoric crosses into intimidation or support for overseas conflicts, while opposing views are far more quickly restricted, shut down, or labelled as hate. That double standard breeds resentment and undermines the idea of equal treatment under the law.

On top of that, the Australian government has actively added fuel to the fire by picking sides in the Gaza vs Israel conflict while claiming neutrality. We’ve seen symbolic positioning, visa decisions, and even refusals of entry for Israeli veterans and politicians. Once the government imports a foreign conflict into domestic politics, it inevitably imports the tensions with it.

All the government really had to say was: ā€œwe’re not taking a position on a Palestinian state, and our focus is on social cohesion inside Australia and what it means to be Australian.ā€ Instead, we now have selective enforcement and selective outrage.

If someone incites hatred or violence whether a Jew targeting Muslims or a Muslim targeting Jews the response should be exactly the same. No protected groups, no favourites, no political shielding. Equal standards, equal consequences. Anything else just deepens division and makes coexistence harder, not easier.

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Probably because other X, Y, Z groups aren’t committing, or supporting, genocide abroad.

That really depends on what you mean by genocide, because the term has a specific legal definition, not just an emotional or political one.

Under the UN Genocide Convention, genocide means acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group as such. Intent is the key element, not just civilian deaths, not just a war, and not just a brutal one.

By that definition, Israel’s invasion of Gaza does not clearly meet the threshold for genocide. Israel’s stated objective is the destruction of Hamas, an armed militant organisation, not the elimination of Palestinians as a people. Civilian casualties, (even very high ones that you would expect from a small densely populated area) are not genocide under international law if they occur in the context of an armed conflict without demonstrable intent to exterminate a protected group.

If ā€œgenocideā€ simply means ā€œa war I strongly opposeā€ or ā€œa conflict with unacceptable civilian casualties,ā€ then the word becomes useless and selectively applied. That kind of language doesn’t clarify anything; it just escalates tensions and shuts down serious discussion.

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Not really surprising given Anthony Albanese used to frequent pro-Palestine rallies.

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Many organizations and genocide scholars call it genocide

Exactly and this is what I’m not liking at the moment is that the government is taking positions on foreign conflicts. If somebody wants to go and support their group, they can go and fight for them in their army, but don’t import it into Australia.

If a Muslim wants to go and fight for Gaza, then go to the Gaza strip and fight against the Israel if in Jewish wants to fight, they can go back to Israel and fight against the people in Gaza.

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This 100%. All hate crimes are wrong. When your country commits genocide, and its leader tries to gaslight the rest of us to think they aren’t, guess what? The gaslighting is going to make some crazy people, especially those who share commonalities with the tens of thousands (most of them completely innocent as well) being mass murdered, crack and reciprocate heinous violence.

It continues to be a shame to me that, yet again, there seems to exist a tier list for human life. Netanyahu and his hard right Zionists have been antagonizing these people for so long now. I would say they deserve just as much blame for this horrific event, as the IDF’s barbarity to hundreds of thousands of Gazans has created massive blowback – leading to even more loss of innocent lives.

One should be able to call out atrocities on both sides of the dispute without being labelled an ā€œanti-semiteā€ or whatever the term is for those who dehumanize Muslims.

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And many disagree. There is no consensus.

More importantly, the ICJ has not ruled that genocide is occurring. It explicitly said there is a ā€œplausible risk of genocideā€, which is a procedural threshold for provisional measures, not a legal finding. ā€œPlausible riskā€ means potentially, not proven (which is an easy threshold… any war where there is a clearly winning side could have it). Final rulings on genocide require a very high evidentiary bar, especially proof of specific intent, and that process can take years and it is unlikely to be found true.

It’s also worth noting that the case was brought by South Africa, a country facing its own accusations of violence against white farmers, often described by critics as ethnic or racial targeting. At the very least, that shows a bit of projection…

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Not my definition. It’s from the UN.

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Lol yeah no. It’s pretty universally recognized as genocide. You must be joking.

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Sure, but there are sound reasons for using the term, not simply ā€œemotionalā€ or ā€œpoliticalā€ ones.

What are you talking about??? It’s been almost entirely emotional and political.

Strip that away and the facts are simple: a terrorist entity attacked a democratic state, embedded itself among civilians, and started a war it couldn’t win. Now it’s losing badly.

That’s tragic for the people that voted in this terrorist entity and are brainwashed into fighting for and supporting it. It isn’t automatically genocide.

You can argue excessive force or war crimes without abusing the most extreme legal term in international law. When ā€œgenocideā€ gets used as a slogan instead of a legal finding, it stops being analysis and becomes pure politics.

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Lol. That all sounds a bit emotional and political! We could listen to you, or take the word of numerous organizations and genocide scholars. YMMV

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Hard to tell whether it’s genocide or not because Israel won’t let news media into Gaza to see what’s really going on there.

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