Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu rarely passes an opportunity to comment upon the way Jews in other countries are treated. While the manic hatred directed against Jews remains one of history’s grotesque legacies, opportunism in the Netanyahu government is a ready instinct.  With a customary sense of perversion, Netanyahu has managed to mangle Israeli policy, his own political destiny and the interests of Jews in a terrible, terrifying mix.  The broad stroke charge of antisemitism is the front name of this venture, and it conveniently presents itself whenever Israeli policy requires an alibi when pursuing particularly unsavoury policies: massacre, starvation and dispossession of Gazans; the continued destruction and intended eradication of a functional Palestinian entity; efforts to prevent criticism of its settler policies in other countries.

The slaughter of 15 people enjoying the festivities of Hanukkah on Sydney’s famed Bondi Beach by the father-son duo of Sajid and Naveed Akram, presented a political opportunity.  Having already accused Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese of being a “weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews” earlier in the year, Netanyahu readied another verbal lashing. In prickly remarks made at a government meeting in Dimona, the Israeli PM accused his Australian counterpart of being a leader who had “replaced weakness and appeasement with more appeasement.”  His “call for a Palestinian state pours fuel on the antisemitic fire.”  It had rewarded “Hamas terrorists” and emboldened “those who menace Australian Jews and encourages the Jew hatred now stalking your streets.”

READ: Australian PM rejects Netanyahu’s claim linking Sydney attack to Palestinian state recognition 

Other Israeli politicians also decided that an unmeasured though monstrous antisemitism stalked the island continent, spawning the Bondi killings.  “We felt and experienced the intense antisemitism directed against the Jewish community in Australia,” claimed Aliyah and Integration Minister Ofir Sofer.  Diaspora Affairs Minister........

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