Bondi shooting: UK terror watchdog links Gaza protests to beach massacre

Britain’s independent reviewer of terrorism legislation has said it is “so plausible” that the Bondi gunmen were inspired by Gaza protests that it is not worth the risk of allowing future marches in the name of free speech.

Jonathan Hall KC is the UK’s terror watchdog. On Tuesday, he delivered a lecture to the Westminster-based think tank Policy Exchange about the Bondi terror attack. Authorities in the UK have already vowed tougher action on pro-Palestinian marches in the wake of the Bondi massacre, including warning they will arrest and prosecute demonstrators chanting “Globalise the Intifada.”

Some pro-Palestinian activists in Australia have sought to distance their protest marches in Sydney and Melbourne from the father-and-son gunmen, citing the ISIS flags found in the pair’s vehicle at the time of their December 14 attack on Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach.

Asked by The Nightly if the attack should be treated as related to the Gaza marches that have taken place in Sydney and Melbourne since October 7, Mr Hall said: “I don’t know whether or not … the murderers, whether they were inspired by Gaza but it seems so plausible that I don’t think we should take the risk again,” he said.

“My perception is that if you don’t deal with anti-Israeli hatred, you leave wriggle room for those who indulge in anti-Semitism, but formally disavow it.

“Once hatred of Israelis is tolerated, then it’s carried around like a flame.”

His comments constitute a change in his position on the pro-Palestinian protests. He initially said they should not be written off as “hate marches” and that he and others took demonstrators at their word and believed that they were genuine in protesting the Israeli government’s actions in the Gaza Strip only.

But he said the facts had shown otherwise.

“The first evidence that suggested to me that this was not always protest or not protest worth protecting came in the persistent invocation of the red triangle, the symbol used in Hamas propaganda to show physical targeting of Israelis in the combat zone,” Mr Hall said.

“This was a direct support for violence, and others will have equally valid alternative examples, such as the cry ‘Death to the IDF, or the call to ‘Globalise the Intifada’.

“Islamic State must be rubbing their hands when they hear ‘Death to the IDF,’ ‘Globalise the Intifada,’ and see the red triangles of death presented with the directness and proximity of street protests.”

He said that the pro-Palestine protest that occurred at Liverpool Street station in London’s Jewish East End after the terror attack that killed two Jews who attended the Heaton Park synagogue for Yom Kippur in Manchester last October represented another shift of the dial.

“Terrorist deaths in the UK were thereby being normalised. In fact, it sometimes seems to me that it’s not so much extremism as normalisation that we have to fear,” he said.

He said this crossing of the threshold triggered the national security’s so-called ‘precautionary principle,’ whereby a threat is considered so plausible and harmful that it allows politicians and authorities to impose actions pre-emptively, such as bans on protests, which NSW’s Premier Chris Minns enacted in the aftermath of Bondi.

But he said in the UK’s case, the police needed to better apply existing laws, including prosecuting people for stirring up racial hatred against Jews, examples of which he said he had lost count of since the October 7 attacks in 2023.

He also criticised academics and parts of the human rights community for taking care to protect Muslims from being treated as “suspect communities” by default under terror legislation, but questioned when this standard was applied in the same way to protect Jews from being demonised over the Israeli government’s actions.

He cited the campaign to remove “religious cause” from the definition of Australia’s counter-terror laws, which Muslim communities argue unfairly makes them a target as an example.

And he pointed to the statement released by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Promotion and Protection of Human Rights and Fundamental Freedoms while Countering Terrorism, Australian Professor Ben Saul, released two days after the attack which condemned the “apparent terrorist attack” and also called on authorities to “ensure that Muslim Australians and migrant communities are not stigmatised in public debate and online for the actions of suspected criminals.”

“This care is also apparent in political discourse, and as far as I’m aware, protests by Jews, by pro-Israeli supporters in the UK,” Mr Hall said.

“But there is an exception to this rule. When it comes to demonstrations against Israel, we witness a delight in words that spread hatred incautiously.

“Hatred expressed to Zionists invites hostility to every Israeli and to Jews worldwide.

“Contrary to all good practice, Zionist is a term that invites stigma and othering, even if the term is ambiguous, as its defenders might say. I’ve seen no caution expressed about this term by those who use it, or fears that Jews are becoming, in the jargon, a ‘suspect community’.

“Those who use this term resort to technicalities, look: ‘There are some Jews who are not Zionists’ and overlook the rest. The silence from swathes of academia and from international rapporteurs about the risks of stigmatising Israelis and Jews is deafening.”

Professor Saul was contacted for comment.

Mr Hall said it was perfectly possible to protest against the Netanyahu government and not run afoul of hate speech laws.

“Just protest about Israel’s actions in Gaza and don’t incite hatred against Israelis or Jews,” he said.

“It’s quite clear, isn’t it, that you can protest marches without inciting hatred?”