‘From the River to the Sea’ makes a landfall at the beach.
New York Post columnist Miranda Devine grew up partially in Sydney, Australia, about an hour down the road from Bondi Beach.
In a column about the ghastly mass shooting there, she wrote that “we saw exactly what ‘Globalize the intifada’ means in Bondi on Sunday — a father-and-son terror tag team…calmly picking off innocent Jewish families at a Hanukkah celebration.”
She recalled the following about the country that is currently governed by the far-left Labor Party under Prime Minister Anthony Albanese::
“On Sunday, this slice of paradise became the latest battlefront of the anti-Jew bloodshed that has seized the world since Israel was attacked by Palestinian terrorists on Oct. 7, 2023. And it is all so sickeningly predictable…In the two years since the Hamas attack on Israel, synagogues in Sydney have been firebombed, kosher restaurants vandalized, cars outside Jewish homes torched and rancid antisemitic graffiti have become ubiquitous along the Bondi promenade: ‘Kill Jews’ is the mantra. Every weekend for at least two years, downtown Sydney has been shut down by Palestinian protests…”
Demonstrations of this kind that target a peaceful, law-abiding community are also occurring in Europe, Canada, and in the U.S.
On Monday’s edition of the Fox News ensemble show The Five, co-host Greg Gutfeld discussed the power of propaganda that, in part, led to the shooting:
“…a transmission of deadly information that is just going around the globe, and it’s all transmitted largely by dupes, students, campus students, all the people screaming from the River to the Sea. Congratulations: They got to the beach…
“How soon after October 7th did we watch an anti-Jew narrative spread and have rallies in Sydney, Australia, and elsewhere that were hate rallies and pro-Hamas rallies, and the narrative of genocide was directed at Jews. It was a propagandized exercise.
“Obviously, Hamas is situating itself under hospitals and schools to achieve that propaganda, and yet the left gobbled it up and made it easier for more of these actions to take place…it is amazing how the targets of violence are the least violent people. Meanwhile, as civilized people, we bend over backwards not to demonize groups…”
In the context of who Gutfeld referred to as dupes, about a week before the Bondi massacre, the nonprofit StopAntisemtism organization released its 2025 report on U.S. campus bigotry, with included letter grades for colleges across the country.
Spoiler alert: The once-prestigious Ivy League, among other institutions of higher learning, didn’t do that well on the report-card metrics.
The 26-page report claims that DEI offices, paradoxically, have “normalized antisemitism under the banner of activism.”
Among its findings include that 58% of Jewish students reported personally experiencing antisemitism on campus, and 62% were directly blamed for Israel’s actions.
According to the report, “These findings confirm the harsh reality that Jewish students are being marginalized in institutions that claim to champion diversity and inclusion but instead amplify division and exclusion. Their safety and dignity are treated as negotiable and often dismissed entirely…”
The report added that “Even since the recent Gaza ceasefire agreement, antisemitism remains loud, bold, and unchecked, revealing that none of this is about Israel but instead it is about Jew-hatred, plain and simple. Coordinated protests, ideological harassment, and institutional apathy continue to endanger Jewish students….”
Those students harassed by far-left radicals may be apolitical, they might even be peace advocates.
And that raises at least one fundamental question in the aftermath of Bondi Beach:
What other minority group is being held responsible for the actions or perceived actions of a nation thousands of miles away?
This is a particularly relevant distinction in that sectarian and territorial conflicts, and human rights violations, are raging all over the world.
Many of the extremists who are harassing, or worse, innocent people on the basis of their ethnicity either on (or off) campus seem to have only a cartoonish knowledge of Middle East history.
Whether these protests are allegedly orchestrated and funded by socialist billionaires, foreign governments or entities, or NGOs that wormed their way into public-sectors grants, the result is fostering violence here and abroad.
In the U.S, those participating in demonstrations are probably among the same cast of characters who are burning American flags and interfering with ICE agents.
War is a horrible, evil event. Like the country’s policies or tactics of its current prime minister or not, however, Israel is fighting a war for western civilization.
The left at all levels has never been particularly supportive of western civilization, though, and is often eager to sell out or appease.
Pandering governments, politicized academia, biased media outlets, the homework-averse celebrity cohort, and so forth have also bought into – at least publicly — the pro-Hamas narrative and assorted aspects of make-believe history.
The campus protesters, in particular, would be terrified if they had to live under Hamas or Hezbollah rule. Even Bill Maher, the liberal HBO Real Time host, once said in reference to the protesters, “You couldn’t survive a week living in Intifadaville.”
It may be worth noting that the left supposedly supports the rights of indigenous peoples.
It’s been argued that Israel is one of the few countries in the world where the indigenous people are still in charge.
That aside, even if you’re not a fan of Israel, a small and diverse, technologically advanced democracy — an imperfect and contentious one to be sure — and one that withdrew from Gaza 20 years ago, the escalation of bigotry against innocent people is disturbing.
Feeding into Israel Derangement Syndrome, it’s also been recently revealed that substantial numbers of so-called America First and other accounts on X (formerly known as Twitter) that sought to drive a wedge into the MAGA movement have turned out to be bots or trolls who are posting from overseas.
Legitimate criticism of any country, including Israel, is far game. Israel’s citizens, for example, disagree with each other a lot. That’s why they had five national elections in about a four-year time frame, culminating in 2022.
There are significant divisions in that country between the left and the right and indeed between the right and the right. Israel’s judiciary and one or more media outlets are far left and are foes of the Netanyahu coalition government.
Israel’s vaunted intelligence agencies must explain how they failed to see October 7 coming.
Disproportionate criticism based on false pretenses is in a completely different category.
For example, a U.S.-based Palestinian activist recently claimed on Twitter/X that “Hamas deliberately hid literal tons of infant formula and nutritional shakes for children” during the Gaza hunger crisis:
“What those in the West continue to fail to understand is that there is no being pro-Palestine without also having a serious vigilance against Hamas’s continued manipulation of international public opinion to hide behind the Strip’s civilian population’s suffering, something that the terrorist organization’s own actions have led to and created.
Never allow yourself to be a useful idiot in Hamas’s propaganda. You can have compassion for the real suffering of the Palestinian civilians of Gaza, and demand Israeli action to facilitate aid entry into the coastal enclave, while still holding Hamas accountable for its part in causing a hunger and starvation crisis in the first place.”
The propaganda campaign has unfortunately also fooled some on the right who have jumped on the bigotry bandwagon couched as a foreign policy disagreement.
One prominent conservative who seems quite worried about dual loyalties, is nonetheless currently acting like he’s the president of the Qatar chamber of commerce.
Whether this influencer, and others on generally the same track, are doing it for clicks, clout, cash, or for something more dark, remains to determined.
In the context of big money spread around, Qatar, a non-democracy, is reportedly spending billions on influencing American public opinion.
According to a 2023 summary from the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, Qatar funded Hamas, harbored Hamas leadership, and “amplifies Hamas message on state-owned Al Jazeera.”
If the argument is that Israel has an outsized influence on U.S. domestic or foreign policy (although the reverse might be more accurate), then in farness you have to call out Qatar for the same thing.
The fact that Trump administration is getting cozy with Qatar is concerning, but perhaps it sees these diplomatic overtures as necessary to advance peace in the region and expand the Abraham Accords.
And contrary to what these right-adjacent influencers are claiming, a reasonable person who opposes any U.S. involvement in foreign wars and would like to see all foreign aid zeroed out, can still have a fair-minded opinion about Israel without someone trying to revoke that person’s metaphorical MAGA credentials.
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