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While the Virginia Bell royal commission into antisemitism grinds on, outside the hearings every day brings grim new reminders of the reality of the antisemitic hate blighting Australia. Even a suburban girls’ netball game isn’t safe.
NSW police confirmed officers were called to the Heffron netball courts in Sydney’s south just after 10am on Saturday after reports the woman had made “offensive comments” during an under-12s match between Saints and Maccabi netball clubs [...]
The Australian understands the woman allegedly said “f..k the Jews” and “you should have all been eradicated”.
In case anyone’s inclined to dismiss this as just typical of the sort of behaviour we see too often on the sidelines of kids’ sport, the Islamic State has just handed Australia’s security establishment a fresh slap in the face. In its English-language Voice of Khurasan rag, ISIS has declared the Bondi Beach atrocity, which left 15 Jewish Australians dead and scores more wounded, an “instruction manual” for future massacres.
“The Sydney attack was only a pebble from a mountain; we will continue to kill, by the permission of Allah, until you grow weary of burying the dead.”
Remember, this is the religion whose leaders openly brag, “we love death like you love life”. ISIS praises father-and-son killers Sajid and Naveed Akram as “brave lions” who struck a blow against Jews and their supporters. The seven-page love letter even features photos of the grieving crowds at Sydney’s iconic beach.
As for the too-often hard-to-find ‘peaceful majority’, ISIS, whom Graeme Wood noted are often scholarly interpreters of Islamic scripture, had words for them, too:
The violence “demonstrated to the Ummah that the path to salvation and the honor of Islam lies precisely in the way adopted by the attackers”.
Islamic State labelled Muslims who spoke out against the massacre as "“hameful”, asserting that “there is no such thing as a noncombatant Kafir” or non-believer.
So, the Ummah – the global Islamic community – are enjoined to slaughter Jews, and reminded that all non-Muslims are fair game in this dar al-harb (‘territory of war’). That is, everywhere that’s not under explicit Islamic rule.
This is an explicit clarion call to more ‘lone wolf’ attacks, ISIS’ preferred method of terror following the collapse of their caliphate. It’s the caliphate’s fan club openly using Bondi as a recruitment poster. Counter-terror expert Dr Levi West calls it “exactly the type of article and instructional material that underpinned the last wave of IS-inspired attacks in the West”. The trend line since Gaza has been grim: increased attacks on Jews and soft targets across the West. Yet here we are.
And the legacy media, especially the ABC? Crickets on the ISIS cheer squad.
Instead, their big terrorism story this week is four Melbourne men – Adian Sarwari, Azan Syed, Mohammad Ahmadzai and Sulaiman Sarwari, aged 19 to 29 – charged with possession of violent extremist material. The AFP says they were “actively engaging” in sharing ISIS-inspired propaganda. Gruesome videos, WhatsApp links, the usual. Bail granted, of course, with the usual wrist-slap conditions.
Note what the ABC doesn’t say. It doesn’t call them Muslims, although the names are a dead giveaway that these aren’t the ‘far-right extremists’ the taxpayer-funded broadcaster obsesses over.
Nor does it explicitly state their immigration status. Only one, Ahmadzai, is explicitly identified as an Australian citizen with no priors. The others? The reader is left to join the dots. This is the same public broadcaster that turned the Bondi royal commission hearings into a masterclass in whataboutery and institutional self-exculpation.
Since Bondi, we’ve seen a steady drip of arrests for Islamic extremism. Yet the legacy media still tiptoes around the obvious. The same outlets that spent years platforming ‘context’ for Hamas atrocities now struggle to report that ISIS is literally citing Bondi as a how-to guide. The royal commission has heard how mainstream media and universities looked the other way as antisemitism normalised. They still are.
The royal commission grinds on, exposing media failure and institutional blindness. Yet the ABC still can’t bring itself to state the bleeding obvious.
Australia isn’t facing random crime. It’s facing ideological warfare dressed up as “protests” and “online material.” The question isn’t whether more blood will flow. The question is how many more “pebbles from the mountain” we’re prepared to tolerate before we stop importing the mountain.
The Bondi families deserve better – Australians deserve better – than another hand-wringing inquiry. They deserve a country that treats ISIS propaganda as the declaration of intent it is – and acts accordingly. Before the next “instruction manual” becomes tomorrow’s headlines.
