Hannukah, Bondi Beach, ISIS, Israel, genocide

19 December 2025

Last weekend my daughters came to stay as we’ll be in different parts of Europe for the holidays. On Sunday, we marked the first day of Hanukkah by lighting the menorah. I recounted the story of the miracle that is supposed to have led one day’s worth of oil to last for eight days. I also mentioned that the festival ultimately celebrates the victory of the Maccabees, a group of Jewish rebel warriors, over the Seleucids, a Greek state in West Asia during the Hellenistic period, and the reclamation of biblical Judea.

The “light” promised by the candles is the light of ethno-nationalism, militarisation and war. Who, other than supporters of Israel and its genocide of the Palestinians, wants to cheerfully celebrate that these days?

We went through these motions—plus cooking an early vegetarian xmas dinner—without knowing about the tragic shooting spree on Bondi Beach that same day. The killings were tragic because the preventable death of civilians is always tragic. The contexts for these attacks can add layers of complexity, as I’ll turn to in a moment, yet difference must be tolerated, not murdered.

At the same time it’s no longer possible to dwell singulary on such sprees without thinking of the genocide that continues to unfold in Gaza. The official death toll is 70,000. If the Lancet’s method of calculating the real number of deaths is used, the total stands minimally at 350,000. Since the “ceasefire” began on 10 October Israel has killed 394 Palestinians, violated the agreement at least 738 times, and prevented food, tents and aid from entering a decimated, newly-occupied strip where horrendous storms are wreaking havoc. The genocide continues. In Gaza we see disturbing echoes of Hanukkah.

There’s almost no need to note the total contrast between the response of the western establishment to Bondi Beach and Israel’s genocide of the Palestinians. Whereas mainstream political leaders and journalists spread lies, obfuscations and Israeli propaganda in response to the genocide, which they still refuse to recognise as a genocide, they delivered unwavering condolences and sympathetic wall-to-wall coverage to the families and communities impacted by the killing spree in Sydney. The different couldn’t be more stark, the twisting of narratives more explicit.

At the same time, we’ve once again seen how the Zionist establishment cares less about Jewish life than the opportunity to use the loss of Jewish life to further its political ambitions, which continue to revolve around Israel.

Netanyahu set the tragicomedic tone when he congratulated the hero who disarmed the Bondi shooter until he learned that the person was Ahmed Al Ahmed, a 43-year-old Muslim. Forgetting just how much he loves Zohran Mamdani, Trump responded by saying that Congress, which has pumped more than $30bn into Israel’s genocidal mania during the last two years, is turning antisemitic.

Meanwhile Keir Starmer and the Met Police are arguing that the Bondi shootings necessitate a further clampdown on the UK solidarity movement. Slogans such as “globalise the intifada” and “from the river to the sea” are to be banned. The empathetic part of Starmer’s brain isn’t big enough to register that intifada means “uprising” or “rebellion” not “murder”, and that “from the river to the sea” is a cry for freedom and/or a secular one democratic state, a legitimate political ideal that Zohran happens to support.

It’s only now, writing this, that I’ve clocked that Starmer didn’t congratulate Zohran on his mayoral victory. Starmer can congratulate and cosy up to Trump. Trump can congratulate and cosy up to Zohran. But Starmer can’t congratulate Zohran. He can’t even pretend to like a democratic socialist who supports Palestinian justice. He feels threatened and so blusters out more attempts to repress those who don't agree with him.

As for the layers of complexity, there are many, but the most important one is surely this: the attacker in Australia had links not to a Palestinian liberation group but ISIS (Islamic State (IS), also known as the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL). This is the same ISIS that:

— aims to build a global caliphate grounded in its orthodox interpretation of scripture;

— actively opposes Hamas and its aim to create a secular democratic state;

— the US and Israel have supported to maximise discord in the Arab world;

— Zionists falsely linked to Hamas following 7/10 (“HAMASISIS”).

Whether Israel and the US arranged for the Bondi Beach to take place or not, the result is the same: a local tragedy is being leveraged to distract attention from the ongoing genocide while creating a pretext to falsely correlate the solidarity movement with antisemitism, even though countless Jewish people are part of the solidarity movement and the focus of the movement is Israel's ethnic cleansing and genocide of the Palestinians, not Judaism or Jewish people.

There can only be peace when there is justice, free, free, Palestine!