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Australian Parliament to Return to Pass Hate Speech Laws After Bondi Attack
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
Australia’s national parliament will cut short its summer break to pass laws tackling hate speech after the Bondi Beach mass shooting, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said on Monday, as concerns were also expressed over free speech.
The Dec. 14 shooting in Sydney that killed 15 people at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration sparked nationwide calls to tackle antisemitism. Police say the alleged gunmen were inspired by the Islamic State terrorist group.
The federal parliament will return next Monday, and Albanese said he wanted legislation to step up penalties for hate speech and authorize a gun buyback to pass the following day.
Australians were entitled to express different views about the Middle East, he told reporters in Canberra.
“What they are not entitled to do, is to hold someone to account for the actions of others because they are a young boy wearing a school uniform going to a Jewish school or a young woman wearing a hijab,” he said.
The proposed laws will also ease visa denials on the ground of racial bigotry, and lower the threshold for banning hate organizations including neo-Nazi groups, officials said.
ALBANESE FACED CRITICISM FROM JEWISH GROUPS, ISRAEL
In the days after the Bondi Beach attack, Jewish community groups and the Israeli government criticized Albanese for failing to act on a rise in antisemitic attacks and criticized protest marches against Israel’s war in Gaza held since 2023.
Last week, Albanese said a Royal Commission would consider the events of the shooting as well as antisemitism and social cohesion in Australia.
A top Australian arts festival has seen the withdrawal of dozens of writers in a backlash against its decision to bar an Australian Palestinian author.
The Adelaide Festival board said last Thursday it would disinvite Randa Abdel-Fattah from February’s Writers Week in the state of South Australia because “it would not be culturally sensitive to continue to program her at this unprecedented time, so soon after Bondi.”
A Macquarie University academic, Abdel-Fattah responded by criticizing the move as “a blatant and shameless act of anti-Palestinian racism and censorship.” She had written a post on Dec. 17, three days after the Bondi massacre, decrying those who she said were “quickly surrendering to the agenda of those who are using a horrific act of antisemitism to entrench anti-Palestinian racism.”
“Now is the time to insist on principles, not abandon them,” she posted on Instagram. “To see through the shameful and dangerous political exploitation of the murder of 16 people by Zionists, white supremacists, the far right to advance their racist, violent, and oppressive agendas.”
Around 100 authors have since withdrawn from the festival in protest, local media reported.
The festival’s executive director, Julian Hobba, said the arts body was “navigating a complex and unprecedented moment” after the “significant community response” to the board decision. Three board members and the chairperson had resigned.
MOST POPULOUS STATE ADOPTS TOUGHER RULES
New South Wales state premier Chris Minns unveiled new rules on Monday that allow local councils to cut off power and water to illegally operating prayer halls and impose bigger fines, as part of measures to curb “hate preachers.”
Minns said the move was prompted by the difficulty in closing a Muslim prayer hall in Sydney linked to a cleric found by a court to have made statements intimidating Jewish Australians.
The mayor of the western Sydney suburb of Fairfield, which has a large Muslim community, said councils should not be responsible for determining hate speech.
“Freedom of speech is something that should always be allowed, as long as it is done in a peaceful way,” Mayor Frank Carbone told Reuters.
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Tucker’s Ideas About Jews Come from Darkest Corners of the Internet, Says Huckabee After Combative Interview
US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee looks on during the day he visits the Western Wall, Judaism’s holiest prayer site, in Jerusalem’s Old City, April 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun
i24 News – In a combative interview with US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee, right-wing firebrand Tucker Carlson made a host of contentious and often demonstrably false claims that quickly went viral online. Huckabee, who repeatedly challenged the former Fox News star during the interview, subsequently made a long post on X, identifying a pattern of bad-faith arguments, distortions and conspiracies in Carlson’s rhetorical style.
Huckabee pointed out his words were not accorded by Carlson the same degree of attention and curiosity the anchor evinced toward such unsavory characters as “the little Nazi sympathizer Nick Fuentes or the guy who thought Hitler was the good guy and Churchill the bad guy.”
“What I wasn’t anticipating was a lengthy series of questions where he seemed to be insinuating that the Jews of today aren’t really same people as the Jews of the Bible,” Huckabee wrote, adding that Tucker’s obsession with conspiracies regarding the provenance of Ashkenazi Jews obscured the fact that most Israeli Jews were refugees from the Arab and Muslim world.
The idea that Ashkenazi Jews are an Asiatic tribe who invented a false ancestry “gained traction in the 80’s and 90’s with David Duke and other Klansmen and neo-Nazis,” Huckabee wrote. “It has really caught fire in recent years on the Internet and social media, mostly from some of the most overt antisemites and Jew haters you can find.”
Carlson branded Israel “probably the most violent country on earth” and cited the false claim that Israel President Isaac Herzog had visited the infamous island of the late, disgraced sex offender Jeffrey Epstein.
“The current president of Israel, whom I know you know, apparently was at ‘pedo island.’ That’s what it says,” Carlson said, citing a debunked claim made by The Times reporter Gabrielle Weiniger. “Still-living, high-level Israeli officials are directly implicated in Epstein’s life, if not his crimes, so I think you’d be following this.”
Another misleading claim made by Carlson was that there were more Christians in Qatar than in Israel.
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Pezeshkian Says Iran Will Not Bow to Pressure Amid US Nuclear Talks
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian attends the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) Summit 2025, in Tianjin, China, September 1, 2025. Iran’s Presidential website/WANA (West Asia News Agency)/Handout via REUTERS
Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian said on Saturday that his country would not bow its head to pressure from world powers amid nuclear talks with the United States.
“World powers are lining up to force us to bow our heads… but we will not bow our heads despite all the problems that they are creating for us,” Pezeshkian said in a speech carried live by state TV.
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Italy’s RAI Apologizes after Latest Gaffe Targets Israeli Bobsleigh Team
Milano Cortina 2026 Olympics – Bobsleigh – 4-man Heat 1 – Cortina Sliding Centre, Cortina d’Ampezzo, Italy – February 21, 2026. Adam Edelman of Israel, Menachem Chen of Israel, Uri Zisman of Israel, Omer Katz of Israel in action during Heat 1. Photo: REUTERS/Athit Perawongmetha
Italy’s state broadcaster RAI was forced to apologize to the Jewish community on Saturday after an off‑air remark advising its producers to “avoid” the Israeli crew was broadcast before coverage of the Four-Man bobsleigh event at the Winter Olympics.
The head of RAI’s sports division had already resigned earlier in the week after his error-ridden commentary at the Milano Cortina 2026 opening ceremony two weeks ago triggered a revolt among its journalists.
On Saturday, viewers heard “Let’s avoid crew number 21, which is the Israeli one” and then “no, because …” before the sound was cut off.
RAI CEO Giampaolo Rossi said the incident represented a “serious” breach of the principles of impartiality, respect and inclusion that should guide the public broadcaster.
He added that RAI had opened an internal inquiry to swiftly determine any responsibility and any potential disciplinary procedures.
In a separate statement RAI’s board of directors condemned the remark as “unacceptable.”
The board apologized to the Jewish community, the athletes involved and all viewers who felt offended.
RAI is the country’s largest media organization and operates national television, radio and digital news services.
The union representing RAI journalists, Usigrai, had said Paolo Petrecca’s opening ceremony commentary had dealt “a serious blow” to the company’s credibility.
His missteps included misidentifying venues and public figures, and making comments about national teams that were widely criticized.