completely predictably, the militaristic fascists who now rule the world have reaped the benefit
the australian marxist perspective
While the motives of the alleged shooters remain to be determined, this is a reactionary and tragic event. Jewish people and their children living in Australia bear no responsibility for the ongoing slaughter by the Israeli Zionist regime in Gaza and the occupied West Bank of Palestine. In fact, many Jewish people have joined the anti-genocide demonstrations, in Australia and globally, as part of the wider disgust and outrage.
But before anything was known, or reported by the police, about the motivations of the two men, the attack was seized upon by the Australian Labor government, its international counterparts and the corporate media, to conflate it with the mass, often weekly, protests in Australia against the Gaza genocide and to demand further measures to outlaw anti-genocide and other political dissent.
This mass shooting only plays into the hands of those responsible for the historic crimes in Palestine, including the Australian and other Western governments that have backed and armed the Netanyahu regime and slandered and suppressed anti-genocide protests, falsely accusing them of antisemitism. In fact, Israel does not speak for the Jewish people, a lie promoted by the Israeli government and the imperialist powers that have backed the genocide in Gaza.
The Albanese government’s Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, a Zionist lobbyist, sought to link the shootings to the large anti-genocide protests, from an initial one at the Sydney Opera House on October 9, 2023, to the mass march, joined by some 300,000 people, across the Sydney Harbour Bridge this August 3.
This rhetoric slanders the hundreds of thousands of people who have joined the Gaza demonstrations against Israeli atrocities and mass murder, and blames the protesters for the shootings. Segal called for even more repressive action by the Labor governments, which have repeatedly denounced the protests and sought to halt them.
Segal’s diatribe matched that of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Overnight he accused the Albanese government of doing nothing to stop the alleged spread of antisemitism in Australia. He said it had “replaced weakness with weakness.”
Netanyahu is a war criminal whose regime has killed more than 60,000 people in Gaza over the past two years, systematically violating international humanitarian law and committing crimes against humanity, backed and protected by the United States and other major capitalist powers.
US President Donald Trump and European government leaders, such as the UK’s Keir Starmer, who have armed, financed, politically protected and diplomatically normalised Israel’s actions, also sought to conflate the shootings with opposition to the genocide. “That was an antisemitic attack, obviously,” Trump told the media.
Likewise, media outlets internationally presented Australia as hosting a plague of antisemitism. The Murdoch media’s
Australian was typical. The newspaper’s chief international correspondent Cameron Stewart claimed that pro-Palestinian activists should “hang their heads in shame.” He insisted: “We don’t yet know the motivations or details of who committed this horrible crime, but this massacre will put Australia on the world map as a hotbed of anti-Semitic terror.”
Jewish people and their children living in Australia bear no responsibility for the ongoing slaughter by the Israeli Zionist regime in Gaza and the occupied West Bank of Palestine.
www.wsws.org
comrade stalin
moscow
