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The biggest thing about Islamic terrorism that the chattering elite miss – or deliberately choose to ignore – is just how rapidly it evolves. In a classic case of asymmetrical warfare, terrorism evolves faster than this year’s strain of flu, with even more deadly results.
When they had the safe havens to do so, Islamic terrorism clustered around hierarchical networks and training camps, al Qaeda style. When the safe havens are destroyed, as with the camps in Afghanistan, or the IS Caliphate, terrorists adapt with impressive speed. Suddenly, the model switches to ‘lone wolf’ terrorism.
This, of course, gives the legacy media especially the ‘out’ they need. ‘Oh, that’s not real terrorism,’ because this week’s murderous Mahommedan ‘wasn’t a member of ISIS’. (Incidentally, the ol’ ‘history of mental illness’ isn’t the get-out they think it is, either: terrorist groups frequently target mentally ill members of their communities, because they’re easier to manipulate.) We saw this grim pea-and-shells game in action prior to Bondi, when media and politicians jumped to dismiss firebombings of Jewish properties, and especially the Dural caravan-bomb plot as ‘hoaxes’ and ‘criminals, not terrorists’.
As you’ve probably already guessed, they’re just the latest step in the evolution of Islamic terrorism.
Australia would be the “perfect” target for a fledgling Islamist terror network that has carried out multiple antisemitic attacks in Europe, the United Kingdom and Canada, experts have warned.
Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamia, or HAYI, first emerged online in March and has so far professed to be behind about 20 acts of violence against Jewish people, buildings and symbols.
Authorities in the United States, and experts in multiple countries, have identified numerous connections between HAYI and Iran.
What do they mean “would be”? We already are.
Guy Fiennes is a research analyst at the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, an independent not-for-profit that aims to safeguard democracies against extremism. He describes HAYI as a “ghost proxy” directed by a “hostile state”.
Instead of spending time and resources training militants, it recruits petty criminals and offers them money to carry out its attacks. Flexible work arrangements like this are often referred to as the “gig economy”, and Mr Fiennes argues that term now extends to terrorism.
Which is exactly what happened in Dural, and in numerous other Antisemitic attacks in Australia. The attacks were orchestrated by a Muslim criminal hiding out in Lebanon (where Iran’s terror proxies also just happen to hang out), paying low-grade thugs in Australia.
Welcome to jihad 2.0: the Uber Eats of antisemitic violence. No rigid hierarchy. No suicide-vest ideologues. Just pay some local crim a few hundred euros, point him at a synagogue or Jewish school, and watch the legacy media tie itself in knots denying the obvious.
This isn’t new. It’s the next mutation in the terrorist arms race. When the ISIS caliphate collapsed, the black-flag death cult pivoted to ‘lone wolf’ inspiration: think the Lindt Café siege or the Bondi Beach massacre where the shooters flew an ISIS flag. Same playbook, new middleman. And yes, those same ISIS flags fluttered proudly on the Sydney Harbour Bridge during one of those charming “pro-Palestine” marches.
The beauty of the gig model, from Tehran’s point of view, is plausible deniability. Which also works just fine for local politicians and legacy media.
“We know this network is linked to Iran and its proxies,” Mr Fiennes said. “Most of the perpetrators of these attacks appear to be financially motivated, and some of them claimed not to know who they were ultimately working for.”
Perfect for politicians and AFP commissioners desperate to insist Bondi ‘wasn’t religiously motivated’. The rapid evolution leaves both security agencies and legacy media flat-footed, and gives them wriggle-room to pretend it’s all just ‘far-right’ or ‘mental health’.
US authorities just bagged the alleged ringleader, Mohammad Baqer Saad Sawood Al-Saadi, an Iraqi with direct ties to Iran’s IRGC and Kata’ib Hezbollah. The IRGC, a proscribed terrorist outfit in both Australia and the US, reports straight to the Supreme Leader. Yet here we are, still pretending the Ayatollah regime is some distant problem.
Iran has form. ASIO has already linked Tehran to antisemitic arsons in Sydney and Melbourne. Expelling an ambassador and closing the embassy was a start. But Albanese’s government still won’t back US efforts to topple the regime that sponsors this filth. Why? Because confronting the Islamic Republic might upset the multicultural apple cart: the same cart that imported the hatred now stalking Jewish Australians.
The Virginia Bell royal commission exists because the political class and security agencies spent years hitting snooze. Opera House chants of “gas the Jews”, synagogue firebombings, school vandalism, street assaults: all while authorities insisted it was “just criticism of Israel.”
HAYI is the next evolution. Cheap, deniable, scalable. And Australia, with its large Jewish community, open borders, and institutional reluctance to name the Islamist threat, is tailor-made.
The pattern is clear: terrorist networks adapt faster than our politicians and bureaucrats. Legacy media wrings its hands about “’rising antisemitism’ while refusing to connect the dots to mass immigration from cultures where Jew-hatred is baked in.
And the AFP commissioner can’t even call Bondi what it was.
