Israeli flag displays at Bondi massacre memorials have exposed deep political fault lines over Zionism, antisemitism and the exploitation of public grief, writes Dr Evan Jones.
AT BONDI BEACH, people and flower memorials for the 14 December murders have been festooned with Israeli flags.
Here, for example, is Opposition Leader Sussan Ley (recorded on her Instagram) hugging a woman so draped. Hoping for political mileage?
Nobody has publicly acknowledged the phenomenon and the anomaly — certainly not in the media. Photos that don’t lie have to be selectively interpreted.
One photo and caption is of particular interest, on the ABC site, 2 February:
And the other flag, unnamed? Is this an unrecognised human form of brood parasitism (of which the cuckoo genus is the best known)? The parasite (the barbarous state of Israel) appropriates necessary support from the host (the “diaspora”) by such means?
Well not quite nobody. Here is Michelle Berkon, turning up at Bondi and hassled by the police. Her crime?
In her words, when asked by a reporter, “Why have you turned up here wearing a Palestinian keffiyeh? Are you trying to antagonise the Jewish community?”:
“I came here today because I’m a Jewish person. Because my family was murdered in the Holocaust. Because I have community members murdered. And I’m being threatened with arrest for talking with the press. Were there no Israeli flags here we would not have worn a keffiyeh. Because this community has politicised this tragedy...”
Quite. The presence of Israeli flags at the memorials is an outrage, an insult to the dead and to the meaning of the event.
The same Michelle Berkon writes for Pearls and Irritations and for Green Left. The courageous Berkon deserves exposure in the mainstream media. Why doesn’t she have it?
Immediately after the massacre, mass murderer Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu accused Prime Minister Anthony Albanese (having previously damned Albanese for recognising a Palestinian state), this time of being complicit in the murders by not stamping out growing antisemitism in Australia.
Netanyahu’s attack was personal:
“I call upon you to replace weakness with action, appeasement with resolve. Instead, Prime Minister, you replaced weakness with weakness and appeasement with more appeasement.”
The Israeli Ambassador reinforced Netanyahu’s criticism of Albanese and his government. Diplomacy, I think not. Albanese should have expelled the Ambassador long ago.
Just before Christmas, the Zionist Federation of Australia takes it upon itself to invite Israel’s President, Isaac Herzog, to Australia. Bizarrely, Albanese, under immense pressure, agrees to formalise the invitation ‘in accordance with protocol’. So a private organisation, singularly devoted to a foreign rogue power, invites that head of state to Australia and that insolence is apparently ‘in accordance with protocol’.
The ZFA describes the Australia-Israel relation as ‘grounded in shared democratic values’. The same old hoopla. Israel is not a democracy but an ethnocracy — it was strategically constructed thus. How could the well-educated ZFA leadership get Israel’s fundamentals so wrong? How do they have the audacity to brazenly dissimulate when its intended readership knows otherwise?
The ZFA’s unintelligible supporting statements incoherently and nonsensically conflate Israel’s sanctity and global Jewry’s security. The ZFA conveniently overlooks that sanctified genocidal Israel lies behind any insecurity experienced by global Jewry.
Preceding Herzog’s expected visit was advice offered by Israel’s Minister of Diaspora Affairs, which presumably gives him carte blanche to interfere in other countries’ politics. Amichai Chikli travelled to Bondi several days after the attack.
Chikli subsequently wrote to Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke offering “experienced” assistance:
We bring extensive experience in combating radical Islamic terrorism and antisemitism, threats that have regrettably become increasingly common, overt and dangerous not only in Australia, but across the world.
Accordingly, we would welcome the opportunity to host and train senior Australian police officers and security personnel in Israel, sharing our expertise and best practices in countering terrorism and antisemitism.
Chikli omits to mention that Israel is very well familiar with radical Islamic terrorism because it nurtured the latter for years (with Western and Turkish forces) in mutually pursuing the destruction of Bashar al-Assad’s Syria. The murderous long-nurtured deep racism of Israel’s security forces is just the mentality we need Down Under to counter those hateful Sunday marchers and the occasional anonymous figure who graffities ‘Fuck Israel’ (bomb them to oblivion, torture them in high security prisons?).
Not only Chikli flew in. So also did a ZAKA team. But what is ZAKA? It operates “post-disaster response teams”, staffed mostly by Orthodox Jewish volunteers.
A Murdoch outlet informs us that:
Dozens of officials, including specialists with experience responding to terror attacks in Israel and abroad have been sent by ZAKA, which acts as Israel’s volunteer emergency response and disaster victim recovery organisation.
[Says ZAKA’s U.S.-based director:] “When Jews are attacked for who they are, we show up, not only to help recover the fallen with dignity, but to send a clear message of unity, responsibility and care for one another, wherever we may be.”
It is remarkable that someone has decided that the local sizeable Jewish community isn’t competent to handle the crisis (it has Hatzolah, countless Rabbis offering spiritual solace) and bury its dead with dignity.
ZAKA races around the world feeding on human calamity. One thing it doesn’t do is cater to the Palestinian victims of Israel’s ethnic cleansing. ZAKA personnel were found fabricating stories of Hamas atrocities during 7 October, presumably to enhance the organisation’s reputation.
More fundamentally, ZAKA’s general reputation, as per the anti-Zionist website Mondoweiss, is decidedly iffy.
This from December 2023:
‘For those familiar with the organisation, this is consistent with ZAKA’s questionable reputation. The organisation has a troubled and problematic history that further undermines its legitimacy and credibility, from involvement in massive cases of sexual violence and silencing victims to financial corruption and the exploitation of tragic deaths to enhance its media appearance and grow its financial resources.’
Just what the Sydney Jewish community needs to deal with its trauma.
The chutzpah of it all defies belief.
In short, the centre of gravity of Australian Jewry is Zionist-occupied territory. The mainstream media is wholly complicit. The political class is complicit or terrified. Organisations and people of all stripes, though the usual suspects prominent, are jumping on the bandwagon for a thoroughly diversionary royal commission centred on antisemitism. Israel is nowhere to be seen. A grand farce in the making.
Anti-Zionist Jewry, exemplified by Michelle Berkon, is the most important holdout. Can a mere semblance of sanity prevail amongst this madness?
There is one important moral to this story. The Zionists take no prisoners. Give an inch and you’re gone.
Albo, take note.
Dr Evan Jones is a political economist and former academic.
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Australia License
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