December 15, 2025 editorial of the New Anticapitalist Party-Revolutionaries (NPA-R) in France, translated from French.
On Sunday, December 14, two assailants killed 15 people and wounded 42 others by shooting into a crowd gathered to celebrate the Jewish holiday, Hanukkah, on Bondi Beach in Sydney. One shooter was disarmed by a Syrian immigrant who courageously intervened. This anti-Semitic attack was carried out by two men believed to be linked to ISIS (the Islamic State). One of the terrorists had been under investigation in 2019 for his ties to an ISIS militant who is currently in prison.
Exploitation by scavengers
This act of hatred must be seen in the context of the world we live in, one ravaged by bloody wars. But not interpreted as Netanyahu, the leader of the Israeli state, supported by Trump and European heads of state, does. He immediately accused the Australian government of sharing responsibility for this massacre, for recognizing the State of Palestine at the United Nations General Assembly last September, adding it was a sign of weakness by the government which was doing nothing to stop the spread of anti-Semitism in Australia. Netanyahu looks to exploit the Bondi Beach shooting to criminalize any support, even purely symbolic, for the Palestinian cause. This criminalization continues in France, through the repression of any expression of solidarity with Palestine.
Imperialism sows war, hatred, and racism
It is not the demonstrations that have taken place around the world, particularly in Australia, which protest the ongoing genocide in Gaza, that are responsible for this attack. It is the policies of the leaders of the imperialist world that bear the overwhelming responsibility. By waging war in every corner of the globe, they sow devastation and misery, and in the case of Gaza this amounts to state terrorism. In the not-so-distant past, it was the United States that supported the emergence of Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, before becoming its target. It was the wars waged in the Middle East that paved the way for the Islamic State. The victims of this policy have been above all the populations of the countries concerned, suffering medieval dictatorships and almost daily attacks. Now that the United States can resume its business in Syria, Trump has just welcomed the country’s new leader, Ahmed al-Charaa, a former Al-Qaeda affiliate, to the White House. In this capitalist world, morality is above all a matter of money.
It’s extremely cynical that those who claim to fight and denounce anti-Semitism are the first to sow racism and hatred. Trump heads a far-right government, whose main supporters propagate the theory of “Great Replacement” and other conspiracy theories, in which anti-Semitism has its place. [French President] Macron relies on the [extreme right party] Rassemblement National to promote the idea that it is the left that is anti-Semitic, in defiance of all reality. Netanyahu has also brought the far right to power, surrounded by supremacists who loudly proclaim that all Palestinians must be exterminated or driven out. This policy offers the Israeli people nothing but endless war as their only future.
Workers of all countries, we must not let ourselves be divided
The only way forward is to continue to denounce all forms of racism that this capitalist world encourages and feeds in order to divide us, to denounce anti-Semitism as well as Islamophobia. But we must also continue to denounce the massacre of Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank and, more generally, the way in which peoples are crushed in order to maintain an imperialist order and the greater profits of the capitalists who run it.
