Stop calling the Bondi attack antisemitism

I have already written about this, but it warrants an adjunct piece to tighten and clarify the arguments.

First, an anecdote.

Imagine if hundreds died in car accidents as a result of drink-driving. Imagine if, instead of identifying alcohol as the core factor, authorities instead investigated whether those who died had posted on social media in the last year and, finding a pattern of indifference to drink driving, concluded that the accidents were caused by "indifference shown on social media".

It's hard to imagine anything quite so stupid. It's hard to imagine anything quite so irresponsible. It's hard to imagine anything quite so incompetent.

But this is what is playing out in the aftermath of our worst terror attack.

Core academic definitions of terrorism from experts defines terrorism as violence against civilians designed to generate fear beyond immediate victims and intended to signal ideological opposition and intimidate society at large. Terrorism does not require individualised victim selection; victims are often instrumental rather than the ideological end.

ISIS-aligned violence globally prioritises spectacle, fear, and destabilisation over identity-screened killing. ISIS operates in many places where Jews are absent or statistically negligible, such as Burkina Faso, which has become one of the world’s epicentres of jihadist violence. In these contexts, ISIS violence cannot plausibly be described as antisemitic in any practical sense. Instead, it is about seizing territory, undermining the state, enforcing extremist social control, and generating fear to project power.

This suggests that antisemitism is not a necessary condition for ISIS violence, but the violence may be directed against Jews for propaganda purposes, specially creating confusion in the minds of the public and conflating extremism with Islam.

ISIS's operational logic is mass-casualty attacks in public spaces, symbolic timing and locations and psychological impact and media amplification. Crowd attacks are chosen precisely because they are indiscriminate and high impact. This pattern holds in regions with negligible Jewish populations (e.g. West Africa), demonstrating that Jew-killing is not operationally necessary to ISIS violence.

Victim selection at Bondi was operationally indiscriminate; attackers could not identify religious identity in a public crowd. Target selection (a Hanukkah-associated event) introduces symbolic signalling, but symbolism alone does not establish primary motive. In counterterrorism, symbolic targeting often points to attention, provocation, and escalation, not precise ideological enforcement.

Antisemitism can coexist with terrorism but is not automatically the dominant explanatory frame. Evidence supports terror-seeking behaviour more strongly than identity-targeted hate crime, as is the case with far-right neo-Nazis groups. There is no controlled victim identification, no selective targeting of Jewish individuals, no operational differentiation from other ISIS-style attacks.

Therefore, antisemitism may be secondary, symbolic, or opportunistic, rather than causal. Effective counter-terrorism responses (e.g. Indonesia vs JI) treat jihadist violence as networked or inspiration-driven terrorism, requiring intelligence-led disruption, combined with prevention and deradicalisation.

Over-narrow framing (e.g. hate crime alone) risks misdirecting resources, misunderstanding recruitment and inspiration pathways,
and neglecting broader terror-prevention strategies. Community protection and counter-radicalisation are necessary regardless of antisemitism framing.

Label inflation (“this was primarily antisemitism”) may simplify political messaging, but obscure the broader ISIS terror model, and reduce analytic clarity about jihadist violence. In other words, it plays directly into the hands of the terrorists.

Accurate classification matters for prevention, not just moral signalling. The Bondi attack is best understood as ISIS-style terrorism aimed at mass fear and destabilisation. Antisemitic symbolism may be present, but it is not sufficient to define motive and should not displace ISIS terrorism as the primary analytical frame.