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Islamic State Calls Bondi Beach Massacre a ‘Source of Pride,’ but Does Not Claim Responsibility
Mourners carry the casket of 10-year-old Matilda the youngest victim of a mass shooting at Australia’s Bondi Beach targeting an event for the Jewish festival of Hanukkah on Sunday, at Chevra Kadisha Memorial Hall, in Sydney, Australia, Dec. 18, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Hollie Adams
Islamic State said on Thursday the killing of 15 people at a Jewish event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach was a “source of pride,” in an article published on the terrorist group’s telegram channel.
However, the group did not explicitly claim responsibility for Sunday’s attack.
The statement from Islamic State came on the same day that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised a crackdown on hate speech in the wake of the attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, as the youngest of 15 victims was laid to rest.
Yellow toy bees topped the coffin of 10-year-old Matilda, who was remembered as a “ray of sunshine” who loved animals and dancing.
Matilda’s middle name was Bee, which inspired attendees to wear bee stickers, and bring bee-themed toys and balloons, while some mourners wore yellow. Matilda’s family has asked the media not to use their surname.
“The tragic, so totally cruel, unfathomable murder of young Matilda is something to all of us as if our own daughter was taken from us,” said Rabbi Yehoram Ulman.
“Matilda grew up like a child would, loving what children love. She loved the outdoors, animals. She went to school, she had friends, everybody loved her.”
The alleged father-and-son gunmen opened fire as hundreds of people celebrated the first night of the Jewish holiday of Hanukkah on Sydney’s famous Bondi Beach on Sunday. The attack, which shocked the nation and led to fears over rising antisemitism, appears to have been inspired by Islamic State, authorities say.
The line outside the hall where Matilda’s funeral was held at noon in Sydney’s eastern suburbs snaked down the street. Many mourners who could not get in watched the service on a screen outside the building.
Some were angry at the government, saying it had not done enough to combat a rise in antisemitism since the start of the war in Gaza.
“It’s like your heart’s been ripped out. It’s terrible … no one wants this,” said Jae Glover, 25, as he handed out bee stickers. “It’s a feeling, it could have been avoided. Antisemitism has now been brewing in Australia for over two years.”
As Matilda’s small white coffin was carried to a hearse at the end of the funeral, people gathered around to say their final goodbyes. Among the crowd was Matilda’s younger sister, Summer, clutching a small bumblebee toy in her hands while being comforted by her father.
“As the coffin was driving away, I was just whispering, ‘I’m so sorry, my baby. I’m so sorry, my baby,’ because I have five babies. We failed this baby,” said Chana Friedman, 37.
Elena Marguleva said the service was “heartbreaking and devastating,” and that she had not been eating or sleeping since the attack. “I can’t come to terms with how this could possibly happen.”
A funeral for the shooting‘s eldest victim, 87-year-old Holocaust survivor Alex Kleytman, was held earlier at the same hall. Tibor Weitzen, 78, and Reuven Morrison, 62, were also laid to rest on Thursday.
GOVERNMENT PLEDGES ACTION ON HATE SPEECH
Albanese said the government will seek to introduce legislation that makes it easier to charge people promoting hate speech and violence. Penalties would be increased, canceling or refusing visas would be made easier, and a regime for targeting organizations whose leaders engage in hate speech would be developed, he said.
“Australians are shocked and angry. I am angry. It is clear we need to do more to combat this evil scourge much more,” Albanese told a news conference announcing the reforms.
Albanese’s government has said it has consistently denounced antisemitism over the last two years. It passed legislation to criminalize hate speech and in August it expelled the Iranian ambassador after accusing Tehran of directing two antisemitic arson attacks in the cities of Sydney and Melbourne.
Still, antisemitic incidents are mounting. A 19-year-old Sydney man was charged and will face court on Thursday after allegedly threatening violence toward a Jewish person on a flight from Bali to Sydney on Wednesday.
“Police will allege the man made antisemitic threats and hand gestures indicating violence toward the alleged victim, who the man knew to be affiliated with the Jewish community,” Australian Federal Police said on Thursday.
PHILIPPINES, ISLAMIC STATE LINKS INVESTIGATED
Police allege the attack was carried out by Sajid Akram, 50, and his 24-year-old son Naveed. Sajid was shot dead by police at the scene, while Naveed Akram was charged with 59 offenses including murder and terror charges on Wednesday after waking from a coma. His case has been adjourned until April 2026, the court confirmed on Thursday.
The center-left Labor government has ruled out holding a Royal Commission, a high-level inquiry with judicial powers, into the shootings for now.
On Wednesday, the leader of New South Wales, where the attack took place, said he would next week recall the state parliament to pass urgent reforms on gun laws.
Police are looking into Australia-based Islamic State networks as well as the gunmen’s alleged links to terrorists in the Philippines.
The Philippines’ National Security Council on Wednesday said that while Sajid Akram and his son had been in the country for a month in November, the pair had not engaged in any military training.
Islamic State-linked networks are known to operate in the Philippines and have wielded some influence in the south of the country.
“There is no valid report or confirmation that the two received any form of military training while in the country and no evidence supports such a claim at present,” Philippine national security adviser Eduardo Ano said in a statement.
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This Jewish philosopher would have called out the Trump administration’s b.s. in Minneapolis
Last week, the Trump administration immediately defended the fatal shooting of Renee Good in Minneapolis, insisting that the ICE officer who shot her acted in self-defense after she had tried to run him down. That same night, the city’s mayor, Jacob Frey, replied to the administration’s claims: “Having seen the video myself, I want to tell everybody directly, that is bullshit.”
Frey’s language shocked some Americans, but perhaps reminded others of the word’s philosophical lineage. Last year marked the 25th anniversary of the publication of Harry Frankfurt’s On Bullshit, which became a surprise bestseller, blasting past Malcolm Gladwell’s Blink and Steven Levitt and Stephen Dubner’s Freakonomics to the top of the Times nonfiction list. But the Gray Lady spelled the title as On Bull—-, which exemplified, as yet another philosopher wryly noted, “what Frankfurt has castigated in his text.”
“One of the most salient features of our culture,” Frankfurt warns at the start of the book, “is that there is so much bullshit.” But the philosopher, whose book was published before the explosions of the internet, social platforms, AI, and Donald Trump descending the escalator at Trump Tower, had no idea just how much more bullshit could fill the world.
Yet, in light of events in Minneapolis, Frankfurt’s exploration of bullshit has now become, quite literally, deadly relevant. Frankfurt observes that the liar and truth-teller have something in common: Both acknowledge the existence of truth. The former, who tries to hide it, along with the latter who seeks to state it, recognize that truths abound in the world.
Not so, though, for the bullshitter, who simply ignores what is and is not true. He does not, as Frankfurter writes, simply “reject the authority of the truth, as the liar does, and oppose himself to it. He pays no attention to it at all.”
This leads to the heart of our present predicament. “The one thing the bullshitter does hide,” he remarks, “is that the truth values of her statements are of no central interests to her.” For this reason, Frankfurt concludes, “bullshit is a greater enemy of the truth than lies are.”
This claim should give us pause. After all, we honor those mythic figures who never tell a lie, be it George Washington or Horton the elephant. At the same time, we are shocked by those who honor Machiavelli, who famously advised the prince to “be a great liar,” observing that “a deceitful man will always find plenty ready to be deceived.”
Frankfurt salvages the reputation of the Machiavellian liar, reminding us that liars at least understand they are lying. In turn, this means they understand that there are truths hidden behind the lies. This is unfortunate, but not unexpected; as Mark Twain quipped, “Truth is the most precious thing we have. Economize it.”
Bullshitters are another matter altogether. In fact, they are truly dark matter because such people are ignorant of or indifferent to truth. Standing behind a podium in the White House press room or in front of ICE agents while wearing a 50-gallon cowboy hat, such individuals, Frankfurt explains, launch unhesitatingly into “a description of a certain state of affairs without genuinely submitting to the constraints which the endeavor to provide an accurate representation of reality imposes.”
This frees them from submitting to the constraints that a common understanding of morality imposes on us. In terms of foreign policy, Trump summarized this new standard of morality in his marathon interview with the Times last week. When asked if he recognized any limits on his use of power on the world stage, he replied, “Yeah, there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
The same worldview is now on display in the aftermath of the murder of Renee Good. The sole constraint on the behavior of the administration and its agents are their own minds — minds that, to paraphrase John Milton, are their own places, busy turning reality into a hell of their own making.
The funny thing about bullshitters is that they might just as easily utter a truth as a lie. Trump displayed such inadvertent truth-telling during his press conference following the attack on Venezuela, when time and again he emphasized its rationale. It was not to bring democracy, liberty and prosperity to the country, but instead to bring oil out of Venezuela and to him. But he does not care when he happens to stumble across a truth. “It is just this lack of connection to a concern with truth,” writes Frankfurt, “this indifference to how things really are, that I regard as the essence of bullshit.”
It is tempting to say that when Frankfurt’s book was published in 2005, we had a glimpse, thanks to George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq, of the real-world consequences of bullshitting. My guess, though, is that Dubya and his cabinet still recognized and, in a way, valued truth. (Consider Dick Cheney’s deathbed denunciation of Donald Trump.)
But those days now seem halcyon compared to the hell we now face, one where both epistemological and moral truths have been tossed into the woodchipper. Perhaps one step we can take to resist this state of affairs is, like Mayor Frey and Harry Frankfurt, to start calling the Trump administration’s lies what they really are.
The post This Jewish philosopher would have called out the Trump administration’s b.s. in Minneapolis appeared first on The Forward.
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After facing backlash, California congressional hopeful Scott Wiener says Israel is committing ‘genocide’
(JTA) — After declining to say whether he believed “Israel is committing genocide in Gaza” during a debate last week, California congressional candidate Scott Wiener has announced that he does, in fact, believe Israel’s actions in Gaza constitute a genocide.
Wiener’s demurral during the Wednesday debate, during which his two Democratic opponents endorsed the genocide charge without hesitation, elicited jeers from the audience. Afterwards, Wiener said he thought the lightning-round format was inappropriate for such a complex question but said he believed Israel’s actions in Gaza represented “an absolute moral stain.”
Facing ongoing criticism over his stance, Wiener — a leader of the Jewish caucus in California’s legislature — issued a video statement on Sunday saying that he had come to a clear conclusion.
“For years, I’ve condemned Netanyahu and his extremist government and the devastation they’ve inflicted on Gaza,” he wrote on X, introducing his statement. “It’s why I’ve been clear I won’t support U.S. funding for the destruction of Palestinian communities. I’ve stopped short of calling it genocide, but I can’t anymore.”
Wiener is running for the seat being vacated by Nancy Pelosi, a pro-Israel stalwart. His comments mean that all three Democratic candidates for the seat have firmly taken the position that Israel is committing genocide, a charge that Israel and the United States reject.
In the video, Wiener elaborated on his thinking.
“As a Jew, I am deeply aware that the word genocide was created in the wake of the Holocaust, which was the industrial extermination of 6 million Jews. For many Jews, associating the word genocide with the Jewish state of Israel is deeply painful and frankly traumatic,” he said. “But despite that pain and that trauma, we all have eyes, and we see the absolute devastation and catastrophic death toll in Gaza inflicted by the Israeli government. And we all have ears, and we hear the genocidal statements by certain senior members of the Israeli government. And to me, the Israeli government has tried to destroy Gaza and to push Palestinians out, and that qualifies as genocide.”
Wiener’s statement comes as harsh criticism of Israel becomes de rigueur among Democrats amid a bottoming-out of support among Democratic voters. Anti-Israel sentiment is on the rise among Republicans, too, shattering a decades-old consensus on the right about support for Israel.
Wiener has faced sustained protest from pro-Palestinian activists over his liberal Zionist stances. He has also long faced right-wing scorn as well as antisemitism-laced criticism over his stance on transgender rights, which he supports.
The post After facing backlash, California congressional hopeful Scott Wiener says Israel is committing ‘genocide’ appeared first on The Forward.
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Iran threatens to attack Israel if Trump strikes Tehran over crackdown on protesters
(JTA) — Iranian leaders say they could attack Israel if the United States strikes Iran over its response to a sweeping anti-government protest movement.
“Let us be clear: in the case of an attack on Iran, the occupied territories as well as all U.S. bases and ships will be our legitimate target,” Iranian Parliament Speaker Mohammad Baqer Qalibaf, a former commander in the country’s Revolutionary Guards, said on Saturday. Iranian officials use “the occupied territories” to refer to Israel, which the Iranian Islamic Republic regime has sworn to destroy and attacked repeatedly.
Qalibaf was responding to U.S. President Donald Trump’s repeated comments signaling potential U.S. retaliation against Iran in the event that Iranian officials begin killing anti-government protesters who have been demonstrating with increasing strength since late last month.
On Monday, Qalibaf reportedly escalated his threats at a pro-government rally in Tehran, saying Iran would deal Trump “an unforgettable lesson” if he follows through on his continued threats to intervene. Agence France Presse reported that he spoke in front of banners reading “Death to Israel, Death to America” in Persian.
Trump has openly said the United States is considering weighing in against the Iranian government. “Iran is looking at FREEDOM, perhaps like never before,” he wrote on Truth Social, his social media network, on Saturday. “The USA stands ready to help!!!”
On Sunday, amid reports that the Iranian regime had embarked on a bloody crackdown, Trump said again that he was considering “very strong options” against Iran, though he also said Tehran had reached out to negotiate. Amid reports that he expected to be briefed on military options against Iran on Tuesday, Trump indicated that the United States could act sooner.
“Iran wants to negotiate, yes. We may meet with them — I mean a meeting is being set up,” Trump told reporters on Air Force One late Sunday. “But we may have to act, because of what’s happening, before the meeting.”
Protest leaders said hundreds if not thousands of protesters had been shot to death in Tehran on Sunday, though official numbers were much lower and impossible for independent news organizations to verify in part because of an internet blackout that the government put in place last week.
“There seem to be some people killed that aren’t supposed to be killed,” Trump said. “These are violent — if you call them leaders, I don’t know if they’re leaders or just if they rule through violence. And we’re looking at some very strong options. We’ll make a determination.”
The potential for armed conflict between the United States and Iran, Israel’s sworn enemy, has prompted sharp concerns in Israel, which last year waged a 12-day war with Iran that ended under U.S. pressure following a U.S. strike on Iran’s nuclear facilities. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu spoke on Sunday to U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio, and Reuters reported that Israeli intelligence officials said the country was on “high alert.”
At least one Israeli official has indicated that Israeli agents are active on the ground in Iran during the swelling protest movement, fueling criticism from Tehran that the protests have been stoked by foreign actors.
Demonstrations in support of the Iranian protesters, who are responding not only to the country’s repressive religious leadership but also an economic crisis, took place in cities around the world over the weekend. Some of the protests included Jewish Iranian expats and expressions of support for Israel.
The post Iran threatens to attack Israel if Trump strikes Tehran over crackdown on protesters appeared first on The Forward.