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The dumbest thing we are being asked to believe today is that pro-Palestinian protests caused the Bondi shooting. It’s self-evidently moronic. No one sincerely believes it. They’re just pretending to believe it to get protests banned and criticism of Israel outlawed.
Nobody actually believes pro-Palestine protests caused the Bondi shooting. They’re just pretending to believe that to promote the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Nobody actually believes “globalize the intifada” means “kill all Jews”. They’re just pretending to believe that to promote the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Nobody actually believes pro-Palestine demonstrations are “hate marches” or that pro-Palestine speech is “hate speech”. They’re just pretending to believe that to promote the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Nobody actually believes there’s a soaring epidemic of antisemitism in our society that is caused by anti-genocide demonstrations. They’re just pretending to believe that to promote the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Nobody actually believes opposing the state of Israel is the same as hating Jews. They’re just pretending to believe that to promote the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Israel supporters are liars and manipulators. They support genocide and apartheid. Of course they will lie about what they believe, and pretend to think things that they don’t actually think. They’re defending a mass atrocity that can only be defended using lies. They’re bad people. Bad people do bad things.
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It’s crazy how the Bondi shooters got radicalized by the anti-genocide protests from 2023 to 2025 and then invented a time machine and went back to 2019 to join ISIS.
That’s the claim that’s being made when people say the mass shooting in Sydney was caused by pro-Palestine protests, you know. In 2019 Naveed Akram was on an Australian intelligence watch list because of his ties to an Islamic State terror cell, so the claim that the Gaza protests caused or incited the shooting necessarily requires an element of time travel. Call their story “The Terrorists and the Time Machine”.
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We’re being asked to believe that ISIS were a bunch of cuddly wuddly snuggle bears until Australians started protesting an active genocide.
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Fifteen people getting killed at Bondi Beach doesn’t magically make genocide and apartheid okay, and it doesn’t magically make it okay to support those things. Supporting Israel was evil the day before the shooting, and it remained evil the day after. None of that changed.
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I hate doing this, by the way. If it were up to me I’d have just let Australia grieve a horrific attack without spending days going “Actually this doesn’t mean you get to take away our rights and silence Israel’s critics.”
It’s not my fault that the worst people in the world opportunistically seized on this moment to shove through pre-existing agendas aimed at stomping out criticism of Israel and quashing anti-genocide protests in my country.
I didn’t ask for this. They did. They’re the ones who made this political. It could have just been about two ISIS guys doing a terrible thing. Israel supporters could have proved me wrong when I said the attack “will be used as an excuse to target pro-Palestine activists and further outlaw criticism of Israel in Australia.” Everyone could have just focused on mourning the victims, and I would have looked like a jerk. Instead they proved me 100 percent correct, and I’ve had to spend all my time getting shrieked at by profoundly evil genocide apologists who are pretending to believe pro-Palestine protests caused the attack in order to promote the interests of a genocidal apartheid state.
Does it look like I enjoy this shit? Because I don’t. I fucking hate it. And I hate that they’re making it necessary for me to do this, because the alternative to speaking out now is voluntarily losing my voice forever.
They made this. This is on them.
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Caitlin Johnstone 