Anti-Semitism is an abjection with roots in ancient times when pagan peoples of the Roman Empire and polytheistic kingdoms of the Middle East and Central Asia hated the Israelites out of fear and contempt for the monotheism they professed. And Catholic Christianity recycled it in medieval Europe through the demonization of the Jews as “deicides,” murderers of God, through the crucifixion of Christ.
The last recycling of that repugnant instinct also occurred in Europe, when in the second half of the 19th century Wilhelm Marr, a German ultranationalist who practiced “Etenism”, a neo-paganism with roots in the Norsk Sed (Norse tradition) and other beliefs of ancient Germanic peoples, considered Judaism as a “race”, generating an insane racial “anti-Semitism” that half a century later Nazism infused into the industrialization of murder. in the extermination camps.
Hatred of Jews showed its criminal instinct in Australia with a massacre and, as an unexpected consequence, the irresponsibility of Israeli leaders who trivialize anti-Semitism, using it to silence criticism and justify everything they do, was exposed.
The target of the attack was the thousands of members of the Australian Jewish community who were celebrating Hanukkah, the holiday that commemorates the purification of the second temple of Jerusalem and the victory of the Maccabees over the Seleucids, causing a massacre that highlighted the cowardice and cruelty that ferments in that lunatic form of racism that is hatred of Jews.
The celebration attacked on a Sydney beach has the historical connotation that implies the victory of Jewish fighters organized as guerrillas against the Hellenic empire that subjugated Judea, and the religious connotation that gives the story that, after defeating the Greek power that dominated them, a Maccabean leader lit an eight-branched candelabrum in the temple with oil to burn for one day and that, however, burned for eight days, that is, as many days as there are arms. the Hebrew candlestick.
In Australia, symptoms of anti-Semitism have been perceived for decades and the Bondi Beach massacre seems the most brutal sign of this social and cultural pathology. The State has not faced the anti-Semitic issue as it should have faced it nor made progress on a necessary control of access to weapons. But that is not enough to support the accusation that the Israeli government leveled against the Australian government just hours after the attack occurred.
It is possible that behind the massacre in Sydney is ISIS, the terrorist organization that showed its resurgence in northeastern Syria by attacking American troops and causing three deaths.
At least there are elements to suspect that the terrorists acted influenced by their indoctrination messages.
The terrorists who fired on the crowd on a beach in the main Australian city had made a trip to the Philippines, where they would have maintained contacts with organizations such as Abu Sayyaf, an ultra-Islamist group that emerged decades ago with independence objectives in Mindanao, Jolo and Basilan, three islands with a Muslim population in the south of the archipelago, but in recent years it became associated with the Islamic State, the bloodthirsty organization that was incubated within Al Qaeda in Iraq.
However, ignoring the complexity of the still hidden plot of the massacre, before the riddled bodies had cooled, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his Security Minister, Itamar Ben Gvir, held the Australian government responsible.
How did they argue such an accusation? Claiming that it was the decision to recognize the Palestinian state by Labor Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, with the backing of the Australian parliament, that acted as a green light for attacks on Jewish targets.
Does such a statement make sense? At all. Statistics show that the anti-Semitism that has been incubating for some time in certain dark folds of Australian society tripled the number of attacks, acts of vandalism and other forms of anti-Jewish violence during the two years that the war in the Gaza Strip lasted.
It is obvious that the massacre unleashed by two lone wolves of ultra-Islamic terrorism, like the many that caused massacres in Europe, the United States and other corners of the world in recent decades, without specifically targeting the Jews but rather the societies and cultures where they were perpetrated, have nothing to do with the recognition of the Palestinian State.
Precisely, the other statistic that refutes the accusation against the Australian government is that of the countries that have recognized the Palestinian State. There are more than 150, that is, more than 80 percent of the countries in the world have recognized the Palestinian State, although it does not yet exist. The last were Great Britain, Canada, France, Mexico and Australia, a country that took that step less than three months ago. And at that point, anti-Semitic vandalism in their territory had already multiplied by three.
Statistics show that both the exponential growth of anti-Semitic violence in Australia and the international wave of recognition of the Palestinian state were caused by the levels of destruction and civilian deaths, including tens of thousands of children, that occurred during the war in Gaza.
Netanyahu and Ben Gvir accuse the Australian government of events that could be related, although not justified, with the actions that both promote in the Palestinian territories.
They could also be accused of trivializing anti-Semitism, that abjection that the current government of Israel and some Jewish organizations that act as its lobbies in the world, turned into a weapon to attack those who question its attempt to bury the Two-State Solution.
Banalizing anti-Semitism by using it to silence complaints and questions is perhaps the worst crime against Judaism that a Jew can commit.
Saramago called Israeli leaders who acted in this way “holocaust rentiers.” And it is likely that, if he were alive today, he would call Netanyahu and his ministers “rentiers” of the pogrom perpetrated by Hamas that bloody October 7.
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