Bondi massacre: hypocrisy and double standards

JVL Introduction

It is possible – and necessary – to mourn the murder of 15 people on Bondi Beach at a Hannukah event on Sunday 14th December.  It is equally essential to remember that Palestinians in Gaza are, despite the so called ceasefire, experiencing deaths on this level most days and living in intolerable conditions with Israel occupying more than 50% of the Strip where they are demolishing homes and killing people, eg for crossing the mostly invisible (and moving) “yellow line”. Here Gideon Levy writes about the hypocrisy and double standards while most people, and certainly most governments, seem unable to mourn victims of both situations.

The booing of PM Albanese at a commemoration one week later echoes Netanyahu’s immediate response blaming Albanese for recognising the State of Palestine.  As we included in our Digest on Bondi,  Palestinian writer Rima Najjar noted that this narrative was ready and waiting to be used. As she said “In the Bondi Beach attack, a verifiable antisemitic atrocity was swiftly woven into familiar geopolitical scripts… In this context, deceit is not incidental. It is structural. Hasbara front-loads moral claims, assigns blame early, and renders later corrections irrelevant. Western reporting has been conditioned to accept Israeli statements as authoritative and Palestinian accounts as suspect. Narrative discipline replaces verification, and meaning solidifies before the truth can surface.” (My emphasis)

This article was originally published by Ha'aretz on Wed 17 Dec 2025. Read the original here.