Ostrovsky: A tsunami of Jew hatred
Bondi survivor Arsen Ostrovsky says deepfakes and abuse show unchecked online hatred can lead to violence.
Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC) head of Sydney office Arsen Ostrovsky told the Royal Commission on Monday that the online abuse directed at him and his family since the Bondi Beach attack had been “a relentless tsunami of Jew hatred”.
Much of the abuse was built on deepfake images falsely depicting him as having faked the head injury he sustained at the December 14 Chanukah celebration. The manipulated material suggested the attack was a “false flag”, that the blood was tomato ketchup, and that he was a “crisis actor” or Mossad agent.
The material spread across X, YouTube, TikTok, Telegram, Facebook and Instagram. Much of the material, he said, remained online.
He recounted how his nine-year-old daughter, who grew up in Israel through repeated trips to bomb shelters, had told him she felt safer there than in Australia. Both his daughters, aged nine and five, were at Bondi on December 14.
He told the commission his daughter had drawn a parallel he found chilling. “‘Daddy, our victory is that you survived.’ After the Holocaust, when our grandparents would say their victory is that we survived. And I now have a nine-year-old girl internalising this.”
A significant proportion of the abuse, he said, was framed as antizionism. “Essentially, everything that is no longer fit to say about Jews is being said against Zionists. It is the same hatred, the same viciousness, but expressed in a more modern language with a veneer of respectability,” he said.
He closed with a warning. “When hatred, whether in person or online, is allowed to go unchecked … it does lead to violence,” he said.
Ostrovsky told reporters outside the hearing room that the Bondi massacre and Royal Commission “must be a transformational turning point”.
“This is not just a Jewish battle … it’s a fight for the very heart and soul of this country – what kind of country we want to be.”