{"id":185263,"date":"2025-12-15T05:00:06","date_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:00:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/185263\/"},"modified":"2025-12-15T05:00:06","modified_gmt":"2025-12-15T05:00:06","slug":"bondi-attack-came-after-huge-increase-in-online-antisemitism-research","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/185263\/","title":{"rendered":"Bondi attack came after huge increase in online antisemitism: research"},"content":{"rendered":"

At least 16 people<\/a> \u2013 including a ten-year-old child \u2013 are dead after two men<\/a> opened fire on a crowd of people celebrating the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah on Sunday in a public park at Sydney\u2019s Bondi Beach. Many more are injured. <\/p>\n

I am horrified. But as a researcher who studies hate and extremist violence, I am sadly not surprised.<\/p>\n

The Jewish community has been a top target for terrorist ideologies and groups for a long time. Many people working in this field have been expecting a serious attack on Australian soil.<\/p>\n

Much remains unclear about the Bondi terrorist attacks and it\u2019s too early to speculate about these gunmen specifically. The investigation is ongoing.<\/p>\n

But what about antisemitic sentiment more broadly? <\/p>\n

Our research \u2013 which is in the early stages and yet to be peer reviewed \u2013 has recorded a significant and worrying increase in antisemitic sentiment after October 7.<\/p>\n

Our research<\/p>\n

We have been training AI models to track online sentiment in social media targeting Australian communities, including Jewish people. <\/p>\n

That means working with humans \u2013 including extremism experts and people in the Jewish community \u2013 to label content. This is to teach our model if the content it is encountering is hateful or not.<\/p>\n

Based on definitions adopted by the Jewish community<\/a>, we distinguished between two main types of antisemitism: \u201cold\u201d antisemitism and \u201cnew\u201d antisemitism.<\/p>\n

\u201cOld\u201d antisemitism targets Jews as Jews. It draws on entrenched myths and stereotypes that portray them as alien, dangerous, or morally corrupt.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew\u201d antisemitism shifts the focus from individual Jews to the state of Israel. It blames Jews collectively for Israel\u2019s actions. <\/p>\n

Many in the Jewish community see this as a modern continuation of historical antisemitism. Critics (both within and outside the Jewish community) contend it risks conflating legitimate opposition to Israeli policies with antisemitism. <\/p>\n

Central to this debate is whether anti-Israel sentiment represents a continuation of age-old prejudices or a political response to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.<\/p>\n

In our research, we tracked both \u201cold\u201d and \u201cnew\u201d antisemitism. <\/p>\n

A sharp increase<\/p>\n

We found that both increased sharply after October 7. <\/p>\n

For example, we studied posts on X (formerly Twitter) geolocated in Australia before and after October 7. We wanted to understand the size of the rise in antisemitism.<\/p>\n

We found that \u201cold\u201d antisemitism rose from an average of 34 tweets a month in the year before October 7 to 2,021 in the following year.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew\u201d antisemitism increased even more, rising from an average of 505 a month in the year before October 7 to 21,724 in the year after.<\/p>\n

Some examples of \u201cold\u201d antisemitism are explicit, such as calls to \u201cget rid of all Jews\u201d or \u201ckill all Jews\u201d. <\/p>\n

Others are more indirect, including minimising or denying the Holocaust. Examples include posts claiming that \u201cif the Holocaust of 6 million Jews were true, Israel could not exist today\u201d or that the Nazis had only a minimal impact on the Jewish population. <\/p>\n

Other forms of hate rely on conspiracy theories, such as claims that \u201cJews are paying to destroy Australia\u201d.<\/p>\n

However, the vast majority of the content our models identified as antisemitic fell into the category of \u201cnew\u201d antisemitism. This included content that blamed the Jewish community for events in Israel, such as calling all Australian Jews \u201cbaby killers\u201d or \u201cZionazi fu\u2013wits\u201d, regardless of their personal political views and opinions about the Israeli government and its actions.<\/p>\n

(All examples here are drawn from real content, but the wording has been slightly modified to anonymise them and prevent identification of the original authors).<\/p>\n

In other words, we have seen an overall escalation of hostilities against Jews online.<\/p>\n

More extreme and explicit calls for violence rarely appear on mainstream platforms. They tend to circulate on fringe social media, such as Telegram. <\/p>\n

On X, we have seen a collision of mainstream discourse and fringe discourse, due to the lack of moderation. <\/p>\n

But antisemitism doesn\u2019t always involve slurs, meaning it can also happen in mainstream platforms. Especially after the election of Trump and the relaxation in moderation practises of Meta, we have also seen it on Instagram. This includes Instagram posts published after the Bondi attack.<\/p>\n

Could more have been done?<\/p>\n

Certainly the Jewish community, I am sure, will feel not enough was done.<\/p>\n

Jillian Segal, Australia\u2019s first government-appointed special envoy for combating antisemitism, released her plan<\/a> for addressing the issue back in July.<\/p>\n

As I wrote at the time<\/a>, the recommendations fell into three main categories:<\/p>\n

preventing violence and crime, including improved coordination between agencies, and new policies aimed at stopping dangerous individuals from entering Australia<\/p>\n

strengthening protections against hate speech, by regulating all forms of hate, including antisemitism, and increasing oversight of platform policies and algorithms<\/p>\n

promoting antisemitism-free media, education and cultural spaces, through journalist training, education programs, and conditions on public funding for organisations that promote or fail to address antisemitism.<\/p>\n

The government had said it will consider the recommendations. Segal has now said<\/a> government messaging combating antisemitism has \u201cnot been sufficient\u201d.<\/p>\n

Some might argue addressing points two and three could have helped prevent the Bondi attack. A common assumption is that a climate of widespread antisemitism can embolden violence. <\/p>\n

The reality, however, is that this is hard to establish. People who commit terrorist acts \u2013 whether they self radicalise or are recruited by terrorist organisations \u2013 do not necessarily respond<\/a> to changes in broader public sentiment.<\/p>\n

That said, there is obvious value in prevention work aimed at reducing hostility and antisemitic attitudes, even while small networks or individuals committed to violent terrorism may still exist.<\/p>\n

Preventing terrorist violence of this scale relies primarily on effective law enforcement. This requires adequate resourcing and a clear legislative framework. <\/p>\n

Education and broader cultural change matter. In short term, however, they are less likely to be as effective at preventing acts of terrorism as measures such as firearm regulation, monitoring extremist networks, and disrupting plots before they turn into action.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"At least 16 people \u2013 including a ten-year-old child \u2013 are dead after two men opened fire on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":185264,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[42,43,40,38,41,39],"class_list":{"0":"post-185263","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-headlines","8":"tag-headlines","9":"tag-news","10":"tag-top-news","11":"tag-top-stories","12":"tag-topnews","13":"tag-topstories"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=185263"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/185263\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/185264"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=185263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=185263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=185263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}