OHPI documents online hate after Bondi massacre
False flag claims, fake images and antisemitism dominate social media response.
The Online Hate Prevention Institute has documented 265 items of problematic online content in response to the Bondi Beach Chanukah Massacre.
Antisemitism and false flag conspiracy theories dominate the response.
OHPI began monitoring social media within 15 minutes of the Sunday December 14 attack, which killed 15 people at the Chanukah by the Sea event organised by Chabad of Bondi.
The report, released this week, categorises the online hate into 15 types, including false flag claims alleging the attack was staged by Jews or Israel, content justifying or glorifying the attack, traditional antisemitic tropes, and Islamophobia.
OHPI CEO Dr Andre Oboler, who presented preliminary findings to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial, said Australia had failed to confront hate.
“Australia has become a country where excuses are made rather than action taken. Instead of confronting hate and calling it out, we give it a wide berth so as to avoid confrontation,” Dr Oboler wrote in an op-ed for ABC Religion and Ethics.
“That approach, as many have warned, leads to the kind of bloodshed we’ve just witnessed at Bondi Beach.”
Dr Oboler pointed to a “lack of courage, allowing manifestations of hate to grow, rather than risk an escalation by confronting it. Slowly more and more space has been ceded to those promoting hate.”
He said calls for gun control reform in response to the attack“entirely miss the point” as they “may reduce the risk of a random attack, but the Chanukah massacre was not a random attack. It was targeted. It was driven by an ideology of hate.”
The report documents examples including posts using coded antisemitic language to blame Jews for the attack, claims the massacre was a “false flag” operation by Mossad, and content villainising victims as “genocide enthusiasts” to justify their murders.
False flag claims are included under antisemitism in OHPI’s methodology because they deny the reality the victims were experiencing.
“We need to stop ceding ground to antisemitism. We, all decent Australians, need to speak up. We need greater public awareness and understanding of antisemitism. Most importantly, we need to stop excusing it and allowing it to fester and grow,” Dr Oboler wrote.
He criticised elected leaders for marching in pro-Palestinian protests that included antisemitic signs and chants, saying they ignored “the concerns of the Jewish community over the signal that sends”.
Australia will “only get back on track and return to the country we knew when the hate we are seeing, antisemitism, is named,recognised, and addressed,” Dr Oboler said.
OHPI said it would continue monitoring antisemitism levels across ten social media platforms to assess the massacre’s impact, with a full report including recommendations for action planned for mid-January.
The full report is available here.
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