The Bondi massacre and the rise of anti-semitism

0:02Emily Maitlis:This is a Global Player original podcast.

0:14Lewis Goodall:That is the Hanukkah song, Maot Soh. It's a song of faith. It's a song of thanksgiving and of hope. It recalls historical struggles and survival. And it is the song that Jews around the world will sing every night of Hanukkah. And it's a song that has gained a particular significance after the terrorist attack on Bondi Beach, which interrupted this moment of joy and of thanksgiving and of prayer and turned it into a scene of murder. Welcome to the News Agents.

0:56Jon Sopel:The News Agents. It's John. It's Emily. And yesterday morning, I woke up to a WhatsApp message from my son, who lives in Sydney, who lives in a place called Bronte, which is probably less than a mile from Bondi Beach, saying everyone was OK. There's reports of an incident at Bondi. And I couldn't find anything about it then. But gradually, bit by bit, the picture became clearer. And the horror as well of what this was also became apparent. And it's kind of shocking. And, you know, my family was OK. And I suspect there were an awful lot of other people from around the world who either live in that area or are on holiday or backpacking in that area.

1:44Jon Sopel:who were also sending frantic messages home saying they were fine and that they had been unaffected. But for a community, and there is a sizable Jewish community in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, it has been a moment of horror. And also, I think there was a growing feeling that anti-Semitism since October the 7th has been getting worse. and you know there are a number of synagogues and jewish schools where you have seen the security gradually being ramped up i think an awful lot of people from europe moved to australia because they thought it was somehow 10 000 miles away from all of this and i think there is a really fundamental point in which you know sydney does seem a long way away and i whenever i'm there with my son and you're watching tv and you're watching something about ukraine or whatever it happens to be it you do feel thousands of miles away from it and now the problems of the rest of the world seem to have landed on sydney's door not that it's the kind of end of innocence but i think there's a growing realization that the intifada has reached bondi beach yeah and i think there will be jewish communities all over the world today reflecting on this being australia's tragedy

3:06Lewis Goodall:but one that they've seen in their own backyard, whether it was British Jews with the Manchester attacks on Yom Kippur, the most important Jewish festival back in September. And this fell on the festival of Hanukkah, which just to put this in context is the most light filled, sort of family filled. It's the festival that the kids love because they get presents each night. And you eat a lot of doughnuts. You eat doughnuts, you like the menorah. And it's about, I mean, at its sort of heart, the festival actually is one where you say we're letting in light. You know, we've managed to keep the temple lights going in the middle of darkness.

3:48Lewis Goodall:We've expelled the enemy. We've managed to bring back a sense of sort of identity to the ransacked temple. This is going back to the Maccabees and the invasion by the Greeks. You know, this is when sort of Jewish people of 200 BC were living under Greek rule. And so this is a festival about expelling the invader. It's a festival that celebrates survival. And so the idea that this was then targeted on a beach, on one of the most famous landmarks in the world at a time of light and love and laughter, I think will not be lost on people around the world who think, really, is this where we're at now?

4:30Lewis Goodall:Is this where we're at? And we've seen it in Washington, D.C. with the murder of that very young couple at a fundraising. And we've seen it on festivals and we've seen it at temples and we've seen it at synagogues. And so I think it has brought home that idea that, yeah, Australia may be miles away from everywhere else, but it is very much part of the movement of anti-Semitism that we have seen in recent months, in recent years. and just to bring you up to date on where we are we've got 40 people in hospital two police officers who were amongst the wounded and the victims included a 10 year old little girl a 10 year old girl and an 87 year old man who is a holocaust survivor and this idea that it has killed I mean more than 16 and we don't know what that number will will do now but it has left children orphaned and it has left parents certainly in this case without a child and I guess one of the questions that we're trying to get to the bottom of in today's episode is this idea of where where the rising tide of anti-semitism is leaving communities are they actually picking up sticks and going away are they trying to change their sense of identity or are they moving towards their Judaism towards their sense of belief as a way of showing resilience and I guess pride in where they come from yeah and I guess one other question as well

6:04Jon Sopel:because Emily rightly you talk about what happened in Washington DC Colorado we've saw what happened in Paris a few years ago this weekend there was German police arrested five people who were planning an attack on a christmas market there have been a number of incidents which weren't just i mean it was kind of interesting for me last night i was listening to the bbc news and they talked about how the gunmen in the bondi attack had been firing indiscriminately no they'd been firing discriminately they had been firing they'd been aiming not just the people you know who were on the beach at bondi they were aiming at the people who were celebrating in a very discreet area of Bondi.

6:46Jon Sopel:It was targeting Jews for being Jews, not just targeting the West in a way that, say, if you looked at the Manchester Arena bombing, it was targeting Western concertgoers. This was targeting Jews. And that's why I think the Jewish community feels that something has changed in the sort of anti-Semitism

7:07Lewis Goodall:that is being felt now. I guess the use of that word indiscriminately is an interesting one because, I mean, my sense would be that they're trying to say, for anyone who thinks this was a political act, just step back a second, because they don't know what those Jews believed. They don't know if they were practicing or if they were just sort of, you know. They were Jews. If they were Jews, they were cultural Jews. They don't know if they were pro the Israeli government or if they were anti-Israeli government. So indiscriminate, I think, in that sense means this was not targeted for somebody's political beliefs.

7:45Lewis Goodall:It was just targeted at Jews, at their demographic.

7:49Jon Sopel:Yeah. And that is, I think, why I think an awful lot of people. So, you know, if I'm being personal about this, I've always thought that the anti-Semitism that has been spoken about in Britain, I think people have catastrophised too much. And I think that there's been too much fear and actually most of us are able to get on with our lives without feeling any or very much anti-Semitism. And I think that this is I spoke to someone, a friend this morning who rang me and said, I've been wrong about this. I think we do have to consider whether anti-Semitism is now a real problem.

8:26Lewis Goodall:Do you think you've been wrong about it then? I mean, do you think you've taken it too lightly?

8:30Jon Sopel:I don't know. Maybe I have. Maybe I have not appreciated the fear that other people have felt. and we can talk about you know a lot of people cite that they feel that the atmosphere changed with the weekly marches in london and i was always a supporter of the you know the right to protest but was it just too much that every week there would be a whole section of the population who would feel i can't go into central london now because they'll be shouting from the river to the sea or globalize the intifada and you've had that phrase being bandied around globalize the Intifada. And hey, Bondi Beach is the globalisation of the Intifada.

9:07Jon Sopel:And it's ugly. So, you know, there is a part of me now that thinks, not that I've been glib about it, but that I have underplayed it. Because everything about me has been about assimilation and everything my family have ever done. It's about, you know, you are integrated into British society. I'm not separate from it. But suddenly, I'm aware of a Jewish identity that maybe I wasn't so much aware of before.

9:29Lewis Goodall:I think so much of the conversation around, you know, has the country become more anti-Semitic or has that country become more anti-Semitic is anecdotal. But I want to bring in a piece by it's a website called theconversation.com. And they have been targeting, training AI models to actually track online anti-Semitism, you know, in social media, targeting Australian communities, including Jewish people. and what they've said is that they are finding two types of antisemitism, what they call old antisemitism and new antisemitism and you can probably work that out in your head, right? The old antisemitism targets Jews as Jews and it's very sort of much the entrenched myths and the sort of stereotypes and the tropes and, you know, are they alien?

10:13Lewis Goodall:Are they dangerous? Are they money-grabbing? Are they, you know, corrupt? That's the sort of old tropes of antisemitism and the new antisemitism shifts the focus, they say, from individual Jews to the state of Israel in terms of blaming Jews collectively for Israel's actions. And this is the stuff that many Jews see as just a continuation of historical antisemitism. You know, they're just doing the same thing, but through a different guise, through a kind of a cleverer political prism. But I guess that is where, you know, when you talk about the language that is used on the marches, This is where people who aren't Jewish, who do feel very strongly about Israel, will go back to your initial point, which is, well, am I allowed to march?

11:03Lewis Goodall:Yes, you are. Am I allowed my freedom of speech? Well, what do you want to say? well if I want to shout free Palestine that's not anti-semitic no I think we can totally agree that's not anti-semitic if I want to chant something about intifada is that then anti-semitic well it's starting to make Jews who are around you Jews who are you know maybe part of the crowd or maybe on the other side of the street feel uncomfortable and if that language then becomes entrenched does it become the first the beginning of violence right is is language itself violent because some people will say no this is my freedom of speech i'm allowed to use phrases what are you going to do lock me up for saying something and other people will say well actually that's where the violence begins it begins with the phrases that are somehow allowed and become normalized and become part of the chanting and become part of the weekly ritual i think i think that's so

12:03Jon Sopel:interesting and i think that's a really good analysis and i think it shows just the knottiness and the difficulty of the whole free speech debate because if you i mean if you look in america where they have been lecturing us jd vance and donald trump and there's you know the national strategy document or national security strategy has been lecturing us on the erosion of free speech in europe what's america done about the sloganizing on campuses you know from the river to the sea or free palestine they're trying to stamp it out because america has reached a very different position on free speech and actually kemi badenok today again listen to what she's got to say on those exactly those questions you raised emily in your view is the prime minister

12:43Emily Maitlis:sakia starmer and the government doing enough to tackle anti-semitism in this country it's not clear exactly what they are doing uh the time for warm words is over i think that uh for several years now we have not done enough uh it is quite clear that a lot of the protests which we were seeing were not about free speech they were about creating a climate of intimidation for Jewish people and I think we just need to clamp down on those people who are creating a climate affair I have been to schools to Jewish schools where they need to have security guards outside people putting filth and feces through their doors it's absolutely disgusting let's have a crackdown that's what I'd like to see the Prime Minister do.

13:24Emily Maitlis:And should marches or protests or chants or slogans calling for intifada to be banned in the UK? Yes, it's quite clear that those chants are about violence for Jewish people. And when people who are of that bent, who are extremists, hear those sorts of chants, they think that there is widespread support for their actions and their activities, there is not. We need to make sure that we stop this targeting of Jewish people. It's been a long time since we saw anything like this targeted at a specific group of people. It's been many, many years. We have said that we, you know, never again. We said never again so many times.

14:02Emily Maitlis:Let's actually prove it. Let's do right by Jewish people.

14:04Jon Sopel:So that was Kemi Badenok. And if you're watching on YouTube, I mean, she was at a racetrack, I think, looked like go-karts or something when she recorded that. But I think the substantive point she makes, actually, both things can be true. That if you are a pro-Palestinian protester, you are saying this is an expression of my free speech to be able to rail against what the Israeli government is doing. And if you are Jewish, it is intimidating to you because you feel that it's being targeted at you. So both things can be true at the same time. And that is where I think it gets really complicated about whether you start banning marches or do you enforce, you know, certain slogans are OK, but other slogans are not.

14:47Jon Sopel:And I think it becomes a nightmare of law enforcement for the police to try to deal with this. But, you know, if the question is, has anti-Semitism grown? The only way of measuring that is what people feel in their hearts as Jews. And yeah, it's absolutely clear that you're hearing an awful lot more people talking about anti-Semitism in the West. And I find this sort of depressing because I love this country thinking I can't stay here. I've got to go to Israel. I'm going to make my home in Israel because that's the only place I can feel safe.

15:19Lewis Goodall:And just to go back to that piece I was quoting from the conversation, the academic is called Matteo Vigani. He actually produces statistics. I mean, you talked about antisemitism being a sort of gut response or something you feel in the heart. Well, he's got sort of data to this. He's quantified it. He's quantified it. I'll just run you through what he's found. Old antisemitism rose for an average of 34 tweets a month in the year before October the 7th to 2 ,000 the following year. If you look at new antisemitism, i.e. the stuff based around Israel, then that has risen from 505 a month in the year before October the 7th to 21 ,000.

15:58Lewis Goodall:Now, what is important, I think, to register is they are still calling this antisemitism. The new stuff, the stuff around October 7th, the stuff around the actions of the Israeli government, they are still classifying this as anti-Semitism because it's not political kind of analysis. It is directed at Jews who have nothing to do with those actions. And yet that is pretty measurable. That is pretty firm data to show you the direction of travel.

16:28Jon Sopel:And we'll be back with more in just a moment.

16:34Emily Maitlis:News you can trust and the conversations that matter.

16:38Lewis Goodall:With award-winning journalists at the heart of the stories from the UK and around the world. Breaking news here in Edinburgh. I'm Simon Marks. My American Week is next. Reporting from the heart of Cardiff.

16:48Emily Maitlis:Discover how today's story affects your life.

16:51Lewis Goodall:Listen on our free Global Player app or the new LBC app.

16:55Emily Maitlis:LBC, leading Britain's conversation.

17:03Jon Sopel:the news agents let's go back to sydney for a minute because we had a voice note from a guy called charlie nightingale and he moved to sydney from birmingham in the uk 29 years ago and he was in bondi yesterday with his family on their way to a friend's hanukkah party down the road from the attack and his son messaged him to say that there'd been gunshots in bondi and within two seconds they heard police cars surrounding them and he works at a Jewish museum in Sydney.

17:34Emily Maitlis:We were on our way over to a friend's flat in Bondi which was only five minutes walk to the beach and as we were on our way we went past another Hanukkah celebration and I just pointed out to where all the people were congregating and there was only a small amount of community security and I just happened to mention to my wife Helen and say why is it that the world hates Jews when we're just a peace-loving organization of like-minded people who just want our families to live a healthy, happy life? And then half an hour later, we arrived at our friend's place in Bondi, and we heard from our son who said there's gunshots on Bondi, and within two seconds we heard police choppers, we heard police sirens, all at the same time, and we were just confused as to what was going on until we started to see what was happening and it was just blood-curdling.

18:28Emily Maitlis:So we moved over here 29 years ago. At the time, we wanted a safer life for our family living in Birmingham. We didn't feel safe in a small Jewish community and we wanted to move to a much larger Jewish community in an environment that felt to us much safer. And we were welcomed with open arms when we moved here and we've lived happily here for the past 29 years. However, from October the 7th, things went through a massive change. I'd started to actually do some volunteering for the Sydney Jewish Museum. I'd retired a couple of years previously, teaching children about the Holocaust. And October 7th happened, and it was devastating to all of us.

19:12Emily Maitlis:And within a couple of days before Israel even did anything, there was the massive demonstration against Israel. happened at the Opera House, which I'm sure you've all seen. And from that point onwards, because our government did nothing to stamp it out at that point, we have felt, as a Jewish community, constantly under threat. And I'm sure you've been seeing over the past two years, since the Israel Gaza War, the constant anti-Semitic slogans that have been dauged on people's houses, cars that have been set alight, synagogues that have been set alight, and an absolute lack of response from our government, our federal government in particular.

19:55Emily Maitlis:Our current government leader, Prime Minister Albanese, has done nothing to counter this extraordinary rise in the scourge of anti-Semitism. And nothing has been enacted since last night. And the deflection has now been about gun control and not about what this is all about, which is anti-Semitism and Islamic fundamentalism.

20:18Lewis Goodall:It is so interesting because the attacks on Bondi did not come out of nowhere. And one of the points that David from Writing the Atlantic today makes is that actually, if you go back to September, a social media influencer who was carrying a Palestinian flag on horseback across Bondi Beach got off with a warning. and at the time a councillor, you know, a local councillor, this guy called Stephen Lewis said, I can't believe we can find a cocker spaniel for being off the leash. We can find a restaurant owner for having a chair on a footpath. We can move people on for drinking in our public parks, but there is no power whatsoever for us to find someone for riding a horse in an intimidating manner on a beach.

20:59Lewis Goodall:Now, again, I think this goes to the crux of this really knobbly issue of what we allow in the name of free speech or free movement, is a Palestinian flag anti-Semitic? No. I think a lot of Jews, a lot of people would recognise, you know, a Palestinian statehood and two-state solution and all the rest of it. So what is it about that action? Riding the flag on a horse, on a beach, in a way that makes people feel there is something more to that action than just a sort of, you know...

21:37Jon Sopel:I suppose if you're sitting on the beach...