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Shocking Data Shows Israel Military Action Makes Jews Less Safe Globally // Katie Halper
Katie Halper | Trusted Newsmaker
Rabbi Challenges Post-Bondi Beach Narrative, Says Israel’s Actions Drive Global Antisemitic Backlash
In the aftermath of the Bondi Beach massacre, a familiar narrative moved quickly through Western media: violence against Jews was framed as the inevitable consequence of rising “anti-Israel rhetoric” and protest speech. But a Jewish rabbi and multiple independent commentators pushed back hard, arguing that the data tells a far more uncomfortable story, one that repeatedly gets buried because it points directly at the actions of the Israeli state itself.
The attack occurred during a Hanukkah celebration and killed 15 people, including a Holocaust survivor and a 10-year-old girl. It was one of the deadliest mass-casualty attacks in Australian history. Within days, Israeli officials and pro-Israel groups began circulating lists of alleged “top antisemites” in Australia. Those lists included journalists and commentators who are openly critical of Israeli government policy, including Jewish writers such as Anthony Lowenstein, effectively collapsing the distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Israel.
How the Tragedy Was Weaponized
The framing intensified after a Fox News panel aired on December 16, shortly after the massacre. Guests claimed violent antisemitism was being fueled by protest slogans and rhetoric, citing alleged chants like “gas the Jews” at pro-Palestinian rallies in Australia. These claims were presented as fact, despite later investigations and audio reviews showing the chant was not spoken at the cited Sydney Opera House protest.
The panel leaned heavily on the idea that “words matter” and that protest speech inevitably translates into violence. Yet this assertion was made without evidence, while demonstrably false claims were allowed to circulate unchallenged. Even more inconvenient for the narrative was a detail that received almost no airtime: the person who disarmed the Bondi Beach attacker was a Muslim man, a fact that complicated attempts to frame the incident as a simple religious or civilizational conflict.
The Data That Keeps Being Ignored
At the center of the rabbi’s intervention was a set of long-running statistics tracked by the Cantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European Jewry at Tel Aviv University. For at least 25 years, the data has shown a consistent pattern: when Israel carries out highly publicized military actions, antisemitic incidents against Jews rise globally. When Israel is not engaged in major military operations, antisemitic attacks decline.
The rabbi cited multiple examples. During Operation Defensive Shield in 2002, when Israel reoccupied West Bank cities, antisemitic incidents spiked across Europe and Western countries. During Operation Cast Lead in Gaza in 2008–2009, the Cantor Center recorded a significant rise in antisemitic attacks during and immediately after the operation. The same pattern appeared during Operation Protective Edge in 2014, with clusters of incidents occurring after widely reported strikes on hospitals and U.N. schools in Gaza.
No Correlation With Protest Speech
What the data does not show is just as important. There is no statistical correlation between antisemitic attacks and United Nations condemnations of Israel, BDS rallies, protest slogans, or criticism of Israeli policy. The rabbi emphasized that there is simply no evidence that speech critical of Israel causes antisemitic violence. The correlation exists with Israeli military actions and the global circulation of graphic images showing civilian casualties.
This distinction matters because it undercuts the core claim used to justify censorship, surveillance, and the targeting of activists and journalists. If protest speech were the driver, the data would reflect it. Instead, the spikes follow bombs, not slogans.
Images, Not Slogans, Drive Radicalization
The rabbi and other commentators argued that radicalization is not triggered by chants or hashtags, but by imagery. Videos of dead children, destroyed hospitals, and mass civilian suffering circulate globally in real time. Those images provoke anger, despair, and sometimes violent retaliation. To argue that a phrase on a message board is more causally powerful than repeated footage of civilian deaths, they said, is to fundamentally misunderstand how human psychology works.
This framing also explains why Jewish critics of Israel are so often accused of endangering Jews. According to the rabbi, this logic is inverted. By tying Jewish identity everywhere to the actions of a foreign state, Israel and its defenders increase the risk to Jewish communities abroad. When Israel commits acts widely perceived as atrocities, Jews worldwide absorb the backlash for decisions they did not make and cannot control.
What Actually Makes Jews Safer
If the goal is to reduce antisemitism globally, silencing critics and mislabeling dissent as hate will not work. Addressing the actions that repeatedly correlate with global spikes in antisemitic violence is the only approach supported by data. Denying that correlation does not make it disappear.
The Bondi Beach attack was a horrific tragedy. But using it to shut down debate, spread misinformation, and deflect scrutiny from Israeli state violence does not honor the victims. It risks creating more of them. The statistics are clear, the pattern is consistent, and the refusal to engage honestly with that reality may be one of the most dangerous forms of denial in modern politics.
