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What Does the Bondi Beach Attack Show Us About Chinese Attitudes Towards Jews and Israel?
People stand near flowers laid as a tribute at Bondi Beach to honor the victims of a mass shooting that targeted a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach on Sunday, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 16, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Flavio Brancaleone
The Bondi Beach massacre on December 14, 2025, shocked the world and sparked intense online debates across multiple platforms, including Chinese-language forums.
Based on my observations, reactions to the tragedy across these platforms do not reflect a monolithic “Chinese public opinion,” but rather a fragmented digital ecology in which platform design and online distortion shape whether Jewish victims are humanized — or erased.
Antisemitic commentary appears most visibly in certain Chinese online spaces, appearing as both blatant hatred and indifference towards the victims. When going offline, however, the general population of overseas Chinese students display far greater empathy.
That being said, treating these online reactions as representative of real-world attitudes obscures both the structural production of hate and the quieter presence of solidarity.
On a Reddit-like platform called Zhihu, the focus was rarely on the violence itself, but on blaming the victims.
After the news first broke, many users chose to frame the dead as deserving of harm rather than condemning the attack. In one discussion thread, a post explicitly stated that because one of the people shot fatally — a rabbi — was “pro-Zionist,” he deserved the violence. Another user constructed a popular argument in one post: he praised the shooter as “a heroic figure of resistance.” A third user condemned Australia’s act of criticizing extremism as “cruel and unjust.”
The comment sections for these posts were even more unsympathetic. Commentators used dehumanizing emojis such as squid emojis, comparable to the “juice” emojis circulating in English-language antisemitic spaces to mock not only the victims of the Bondi Beach attack, but Holocaust victims as well. Then, not long after, these posts and comments were quickly deleted by the platform.
On an Instagram-like platform called RedNote (Xiaohongshu), the tone was remarkably different. Praising violence becomes more scarce, but most posts completely ignore the casualties at hand. Users focused on expressing fear about their own public safety, and imagining what it would feel like if such an attack occurred in one’s own neighborhood, while showing no empathy to the dead and the wounded.
Rather than debating what the victims “represented” in the grander political discourse, users spoke about the violence that was displayed at Bondi Beach without mentioning what motivated the attack — which was antisemitism.
After reading these online reactions, I brought the topic into conversations with Chinese international students in my social circle. Unsurprisingly, the students I spoke with were overwhelmingly sympathetic. A male student at UCLA told me that he donated 10 dollars to a fundraiser for the shooting survivors. A female student at USC canceled her planned trip to Australia after the incident and sent messages of condolence to the victims’ families. An Australian friend and a graduate student at the University of Sydney helped organize members of the local Chinese community to send flowers in memory of those who were killed.
Finally, I must address one question: if most people I talk to are sympathetic in real life, then why do hateful comments dominate certain online Chinese platforms?
Incentives offered by these platforms in the form of likes and upvotes by other users drives the disconnect between online hostility and offline sympathy, suggesting that visibility online is shaped less by majority opinion. Instead, the more radical you are, the more rewards you get.
In recent years, official Chinese media rhetoric toward the Jewish people has grown increasingly hostile, particularly following developments in the Middle East and Israel.
Within this environment, antisemitic narratives — often framed as “anti-Zionism” or critiques of Western power — can circulate online with relatively little resistance, especially when they align with prevailing geopolitical sentiments of uniting the third world. However, this tolerance has clear limits. When such commentary becomes too explicit, too violent, or risks drawing international scrutiny, it is often quietly censored or removed. As a result, the opinions that remain visible online are already shaped by political filtering, rather than representing an unmediated public conversation.
The result is a contradictory system in which antisemitic discourse is neither fully endorsed nor consistently suppressed, but selectively managed to avoid reputational damage rather than to protect Jewish communities themselves. In this sense, censorship functions less as a moral boundary than as a tool of image control, intervening not to challenge antisemitism, but to ensure it does not undermine the state’s global standing. What appears as “public opinion” on these platforms therefore reflects layers of moderation and selective visibility rather than the full range of social attitudes.
Taken together, these contrasts suggest that antisemitism in Chinese-language online spaces cannot be understood simply as a reflection of popular sentiment. Rather, it emerges at the intersection of platform design incentives that empower users to share radical thoughts, geopolitical narratives, and selective censorship that prioritizes image over accountability.
When the most extreme voices are the most visible, Jewish suffering risks being reduced to abstraction or spectacle. Recognizing this distortion is a necessary first step toward confronting antisemitism without reproducing new misreadings or stereotypes of Chinese communities themselves. In a censored environment, silence and removal are themselves forms of distortion, shaping not only what can be said but what can be seen.
Angella Tang is a UChicago Biology student and a CAMERA fellow passionate about fostering cross-cultural and interfaith understanding.
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YouTuber Ms. Rachel Apologizes for ‘Accidentally’ Liking Instagram Comment Calling to ‘Free America From Jews’
Ms. Rachel. Photo: Wiki Commons.
Children’s educator and YouTuber Ms. Rachel admitted on Wednesday that she “accidentally” liked an antisemitic comment on Instagram that called for America to be “free from the Jews.”
The YouTube star, who creates toddler learning videos, apologized for the apparent mistake after a social media user privately messaged her on Instagram and pointed out that Ms. Rachel liked the antisemitic comment left on one of her posts. The private message promoted Ms. Rachel, 43, to issue a public apology in a video that she posted Wednesday on Instagram for her 4.8 million followers.
The YouTuber, whose real name is Rachel Griffin Accurso, explained that she thought she deleted the hateful comment but accidentally hit “like and hide” instead. The avid critic of Israel, who has shared online posts accusing the Jewish state of “genocide” and has 18.6 million subscribers on her YouTube channel, got emotional in an Instagram video while explaining what happened.
“I thought I deleted a comment, and I accidentally hit ‘like’ and hide,’” she said in an Instagram video. “I don’t know how or why. I’ve accidentally liked comments before. It happens. I’m a human who makes mistakes. I would never agree with an antisemitic thing like the comment. We have Jewish family, a lot of my friends are Jewish. I delete antisemitic comments.”
The issue reportedly began when Ms. Rachel shared a statement from her notes app on Instagram that read “Free Palestine, Free Sudan, Free Congo, Free Iran.” A social media user who replied to the post wrote, “Free America from the Jews” and the comment garnered four likes including from Ms. Rachel, according to screenshots cited by the New York Post.
The children’s YouTube star insisted she was “so broken over” the incident.
“I feel like we can’t be human anymore online,” she complained in the video. “And I’m so sorry for the confusion it caused. I’m so sorry if anyone thought that I would ever agree with something horrible and antisemitic like that. I don’t.”
“I want to say that it’s OK to be human and it’s OK to make mistakes and I’m old, so I am not as good with touching things online, I guess. I have liked things by accident before,” she added. “Everyone who knows me knows I would never like that.”
In an earlier Instagram post about the incident, Ms. Rachel wrote that “people are allowed to make mistakes” and that she was “super sorry for any confusion it caused.”
“I delete antisemitism ANY time I see it. I am against all forms of hate including antisemitism against the Jewish people,” she added.
The watchdog group StopAntisemitism.org has previously accused Ms. Rachel of spreading Hamas propaganda and false information about Israel’s military actions in the Gaza Strip during the Israel-Hamas war.
Ms. Rachel lives in New York City and her husband is Broadway music director and composer Aron Accurso.
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Discussion: Growing up Hasidic in Vienna
זונטיק דעם 25סטן יאַנואַר וועט אויף זום פֿאָרקומען אַ שמועס מיט איידל מלובֿיצקי (מאַלאָוויצקי), אַ צאַנזער־רביש אייניקל וואָס איז געבוירן און דערצויגן געוואָרן בײַ אַ חסידישער סלאָנימער משפּחה אין ווין, עסטרײַך.
אלי בענעדיקט, וואָס וועט פֿירן דעם אינטערוויו און איז אַליין פֿון אַ חסידישער משפּחה, האָט געזאָגט אַז איידל מלוביצקי „טראָגט אין זיך אַ לעבעדיק לעבנבילד פֿון אַ חסידישער וועלט אין אַ מאָדערנער שטאָט. אין איר דערציילן פֿאַרבינדן זיך פּערזענלעכע זכרונות מיט קהילות־געשיכטע, און ייִדיש בלײַבט די שליסלשפּראַך פֿאַר ביידע.“
די דיסקוסיע ווערט געשטיצט פֿון דער ייִדיש־ליגע.
איידל מלובֿיצקי איז הײַנט אַ ייִדיש־לערערין און קולטור־פֿיגור, אַקטיוו אין פֿאַרשידענע אינסטיטוציעס — צווישן זיי: דער ווינער אוניווערסיטעט, „יונג־ייִדיש־ווין“ און „ייִדיש־זומער־ווײַמאַר“. זי איז אויך אַ וועגווײַזערין און גיט לעקציעס וועגן דער ייִדישער געשיכטע פֿון ווין, וועגן דער חסידישער געשיכטע בכלל, און די געשיכטע פֿון דער חסידישער קהילה אין ווין בפֿרט. בקרובֿ וועט אויך אַרויס אַ דאָקומענטאַר וועגן די בית־יעקבֿ־שולן, וווּ זי ווערט אויך אינטערוויוירט.
דער שמועס, וואָס איז פֿרײַ פֿון אָפּצאָל, וועט פֿאָרקומען זונטיק, דעם 25סטן יאַנואַר, 2 אַ זייגער נאָך מיטאָג ניו־יאָרקער צײַט. כּדי זיך צו רעגיסטרירן גיט אַ קוועטש דאָ.
The post Discussion: Growing up Hasidic in Vienna appeared first on The Forward.
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Australia PM Albanese ‘Profoundly Sorry’ for Failing to Prevent Bondi Beach Attack
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese speaks at the Sydney Opera House during a National Day of Mourning for the victims of the Dec. 14, 2025, mass shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, Jan. 22, 2026. Photo: REUTERS/Jeremy Piper
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Thursday he was “profoundly sorry” for his failure to prevent the Bondi Beach mass shooting, as the country observed a day of mourning for the victims of the attack.
Police say a father and son opened fire at an event celebrating the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on Dec. 14, killing 15 people in Australia‘s worst mass shooting in decades.
They say the two men were inspired by Islamic State to carry out the attack, which the government has called an act of terrorism against Jewish people.
Flags were flown at half-mast across the country ahead of a memorial event at Sydney’s iconic Opera House, where Albanese apologized to the relatives of the victims in the audience.
“You came to celebrate a festival of light and freedom and you left with the violence of hatred. I am deeply and profoundly sorry that we could not protect your loved ones from this evil,” Albanese said to sustained applause in his speech at the event.
Last month, the prime minister said he was “sorry for what the Jewish community and our nation as a whole has experienced” – an apology that some relatives said was insufficient.
A minute’s silence, including on the country’s main television channels, was held across the nation just after 7 pm in Sydney (0800 GMT) as the memorial event began.
Event attendees lit candles and heard speeches from other lawmakers, as well as Jewish prayers and video tributes.
Buildings across the country, including cricket stadiums in Melbourne and Perth, were also illuminated, while play was paused during the Australian Open tennis tournament to observe the minute’s silence.
The Bondi attack shocked the nation and led to calls for tougher action on antisemitism and gun control, with critics of Albanese saying he had not done enough to crack down on a spate of attacks on the Jewish community in recent years.
The government disputes this, and has already passed legislation tightening background checks for gun licenses, as well as separate legislation that would lower the threshold for prosecuting hate speech offenses.