An award-winning Australian writer has called for the destruction of Israel and the “death cult of Zionism” in what was apparently meant to be a message of hope and optimism for the new year.

“May 2025 be the end of Israel. May it be the end of the US-Israeli imperial scourge on humanity. May we see the abolishment of the death cult of Zionism and the end of US empire and finally a world where the slaughter, annihilation, and torture of Palestinians is no longer daily routine,” Randa Abdel-Fattah posted on X/Twitter on Wednesday evening.

“And to achieve that,” she continued, “is to snowball collective liberation because the tentacles of Western imperialism oppress and dehumanize us all. May every baby slaughtered in Zionism’s genocide haunt you who openly support or acquiesce through your gutless silence.”

Abdel-Fattah’s tweet came in response to a social media post by the Turkish public broadcaster TRT World saying that three newborn Palestinian babies died from extreme cold in Gaza, where Israel has been fighting Hamas since the Palestinian terrorist group invaded the Jewish state on Oct. 7, 2023.

Abdel-Fattah, a lawyer and Future Fellow in the Department of Sociology at Macquarie University in Sydney, is one of Australia’s most prominent pro-Palestinian activists. She has also written 12 books, for which she has won multiple awards..

The Australian Jewish Association lambasted Abdel-Fattah for her comments, responding that “evil hate speech like this has no place in Australia.”

Wednesday was not the first time that Abdel-Fattah came under fire for her anti-Israel activity.

In October, the New South Wales Police Force posted on social media saying it would not tolerate flags of the Lebanese terrorist group Hezbollah or portraits of its leaders at anti-Israel protests. The message was displayed in blue and white, coincidentally the colors of the Israeli flag — a point noted by Abdel-Fattah.

“Brought to you in the colors of Israel’s flag,” the writer responded, appearing to insinuate without evidence that the Australian police force was acting on behalf of the Jewish state.

That same month, Abdel-Fattah penned an op-ed in which she accused Israel of “industrialized genocide, domicide, scholasticide, infanticide, femicide, medicide, and ecocide” in Gaza and described the Israeli state as “stolen land.” The writer also falsely accused Israel of seeking to expand its territory into Lebanon and Syria and posted messages from group chats that she was part of expressing excitement during Hamas’s massacre across southern Israel last Oct. 7.

The academic, who reportedly receives an $802,000 taxpayer-funded grant for her research, in April led a “Gaza Solidarity Encampment” for “all ages” at Sydney University to “inspire” children to “stand up for justice and solidarity.”

Footage showed Abdel-Fattah clapping and encouraging children as they chanted slogans including “intifada,” “Israel is a terrorist,” and “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free” — a popular slogan among anti-Israel activists that has been widely interpreted as a call for the destruction of the Jewish state, which is located between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea.

Abdel-Fattah’s activism has come amid a surge in antisemitism across Australia since Hamas’s Oct. 7 atrocities, amid the ensuing war in Gaza.

Earlier this month, for example, arsonists heavily damaged a synagogue in Melbourne in what the country’s prime minister called an antisemitic attack.

The attack followed the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ) releasing a report showing that antisemitism in Australia quadrupled to record levels over the past year, with Australian Jews experiencing more than 2,000 antisemitic incidents between October 2023 and September 2024.

The data included dozens of assaults and hundreds of incidents of property destruction and hate speech. Physical assaults recorded by the group jumped from 11 in 2023 to 65 in 2024. The level of antisemitism for the past year was six times the average of the preceding 10 years.

In one notorious episode in the immediate aftermath of the Oct. 7 attack, hundreds of pro-Hamas protesters gathered outside the Sydney Opera House chanting “gas the Jews,” “f—k the Jews,” and other epithets.

The explosion of hate also included vandalism and threats of gun violence, as well as incidents such as a brutal attack on a Jewish man in a park in Sydney.

Many of the antisemitic outrages documented by the ECAJ appeared to be connected to anti-Israel animus.

In June, the US consulate in Sydney was vandalized and defaced by a man carrying a sledgehammer who smashed the windows and graffitied inverted red triangles on the building. The inverted red triangle has become a common symbol at pro-Hamas rallies. The Palestinian terrorist group, which rules Gaza, has used inverted red triangles in its propaganda videos to indicate Israeli targets about to be attacked. According to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), “the red triangle is now used to represent Hamas itself and glorify its use of violence.”

That same month, the office of Australian lawmaker Josh Burns was vandalized, with the perpetrators shattering windows, lighting fires, and graffitiing “Zionism is Fascism” on the building.

Weeks later, multiple memorials near the Australian War Memorial were defaced with anti-Israel graffiti. The messages included “Free Palestine,” “Free Gaza,” “Blood on your hands,” and “From the river to the sea.”

Around the same time in July, anti-Israel activists vandalized the oldest synagogue in Sydney, displaying a large banner outside the front entrance reading “Sanction Israel,” along with flags of the Palestine Liberation Organization.

Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong said in April that Canberra would consider recognizing a Palestinian state. The current government has also walked back the decision by the previous Liberal Party government to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

Earlier this month, Australia voted in favor of a UN General Assembly resolution calling on Israel to withdraw from the West Bank and Gaza, breaking a two-decade pattern of opposing such a measure.

The post ‘May 2025 Be the End of Israel’: Australian Writer Calls for Destruction of Jewish State to Mark New Year first appeared on Algemeiner.com.