Jewish man wrongly named as Bondi Junction launches legal proceedings

The deliberate misinformation that led to naming Jewish student Benjamin Cohen as the Westfield Bondi Junction attacker was a “modern blood libel”, according to Dr Andre Oboler, CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute.

Cohen, 20, has engaged two of Australia’s foremost defamation lawyers in Patrick George of Giles George as his solicitor, and Sue Chrysanthou SC as barrister, to launch legal proceedings against Channel 7 for wrongly naming him as the killer on air.

Cohen’s name and photo began circulating on X by online trolls just hours after the horrific stabbing attack that claimed the lives of six people at Sydney’s eastern suburbs shopping centre.

Simeon Boikov, who goes by the moniker Aussie Cossack on X, posted a screenshot of Cohen’s LinkedIn account and wrote: “Unconfirmed reports identify the Bondi attacker as Benjamin Cohen.

“Cohen? Really? And to think so many commentators tried to initially blame Muslims.”

Maram Susli, a Syrian-Australian conspiracy theorist that goes by “partisangirl”, then reposted Boikov.

“If this is true it would explain why I thought he looked Israeli,” she said in a now-deleted tweet.

Cohen was then wrongly linked to the attack by Channel 7 Sunrise co-host Matt Shirvington shortly after 6am the morning after the horrific attack, and again by journalist Lucy McLeod 10 minutes later.

Queensland man Joel Cauchi, 40, was subsequently identified as the killer.

Seven issued an on-air apology to Cohen on Sunday and blamed ‘human error’ for the blunder.

Oboler told The AJN that the misinformation on X was taken viral by “Palestinian activists who sought to paint Jews as monsters who deliberately sought to kill children”.

“The data the Online Hate Prevention Institute collected on this incident mirrors our data collected since October 7 in general,” Oboler added. “Traditional antisemitism was the key focus. Palestinian activists pushed that antisemitism with glee. Ben was the immediate target, but so many of the messages used the false allegation against him to make general comments demonising Jews.”

Oboler said Australia has a “significant antisemitism problem” and urges the government to appoint an antisemitism coordinator.

“When Palestinian activists engage in blatant antisemitism, it is no longer peaceful activism,” Oboler said. “There is no excuse or exception. It is racism. It is hate speech. It must be called out and named. It is antisemitism.”

Cohen has taken the first step in defamation proceedings against Seven, with his lawyer sending a concerns notice to the network.

Speaking to The Australian in a video, Cohen said: “It’s extremely disappointing to me to see people mindlessly propagating this information without even the slightest thought put into fact-checking.

“But what’s even more disappointing for me is a major news network doing this – using my name without waiting for a statement from the police to verify this, or going out to try and verify it themselves.”