The shooting at Bondi Beach was horrific. Innocent people were killed. Families were shattered. A community was traumatised. None of that is in question.

What is in question is what happened next — not in Australia, but in the political and media afterlife of the attack. Because long before the facts were established, the narrative was already being written.

As with so many acts of political violence, the real story isn’t just about who pulled the trigger. It’s about who benefited from the fallout. And on that front, the answer is unambiguous: Israel did.

This isn’t a claim about responsibility. It’s a claim about consolidation of power. And power doesn’t need to plan an event to exploit it. It only needs to be opportunistic and well positioned to profit from fear, confusion, and division. Israel is exceptionally well positioned to do exactly that.

Bondi beach spin

Almost immediately, the attack was reframed through the familiar and lazy lens of sectarianism. Religion was dragged to the centre of the story. Motive was assumed rather than established. And what should have been treated as a criminal atrocity was transformed into a ‘civilisational’ problem. This move is never neutral. Sectarianism reframes this into identity politics. It suddenly becomes a question of  ‘two sides.’

That isn’t accidental. Sectarianism has always been a colonial ‘technology.’ From the British Raj in India to colonial Ireland, from West Asia to the Balkans, imperial power has relied on dividing populations along religious or communal lines. Not because those divisions are inherent, but because they are politically useful. If sectarianism is inherent, why do the dominant powers always need to highlight and enforce it? But using sectarianism, they fracture resistance and fragment it, flatten hierarchies, and obscure who wields the real power. When violence is translated as ‘ancient’ hatred, empire disappears from view.

The Sykes-Picot agreement literally divided West Asia into a country for the Jews, a country for the Maronite Christians, a country for the Alawites and a country for the Druze. If this does nothing, it proves how heavily colonialism relies on using religion as a plot device to divide and rule.

New dogs, old tricks

That same trick is being deployed today. Sectarianism is colonialism’s fountain of youth.

Colonialism, you look so young, what’s your secret? Oh why that’s so kind of you. My secret is sectarian strife! It made all my wrinkles disappear. That weapon of mass distraction. (Fuck off Tony Blair, hands off my oil. Sit! Good boy.)

This is not a theological conflict. History proves this. It never was. Why did it suddenly become a problem after the Eastern Question, when Britain and France wanted to know what to do with the decaying Ottoman Empire?

This is settler colonialism and imperialism. It is the powerful imposing themselves on the powerless, then hiding behind identity when challenged. Israel is not an anomaly in this system — it is one of its most useful instruments. The West’s ‘aircraft carrier’ on land. A settler state embedded in Western colonial power, armed to the teeth, diplomatically protected, and treated as untouchable even as it commits the worst atrocities — apartheid, ethnic cleansing, and genocide.

It projects power without accountability. And when violence erupts elsewhere, especially if it can be linked — however vaguely — to Muslims or Palestinians, Israel is always primed to use this to strengthen its position.

Which brings us to the reaction from Benjamin Netanyahu.

Within hours, Israel’s prime minister was buzzing. He framed the Bondi beach attack as evidence that recognising Palestine leads to violence. Who needs evidence to support their claims when you’ve got a big mouth and a compliant mainstream media that platforms you no matter what.

This also comes from a man overseeing the annihilation of Gaza, presiding over mass killing, starvation, and ethnic cleansing. One of the most racist and Islamophobic leaders on the global stage suddenly decided he was an authority on tolerance.

The timing was not accidental. Israel is under unprecedented pressure. Its international standing has collapsed. It is increasingly treated as a pariah state, exposed by its own brutality and lies. Countries are withdrawing from Eurovision, winners returning their awards and masses boycotting the event because Israel was allowed to participate. UEFA is considering banning Israel. Who ever thought this was even remotely possible?

The Bondi beach attack gave Netanyahu something priceless: distraction, deflection, and a fresh moral sword.

In the UK, the response was not introspection but repression. The phrase “globalise the intifada” has now been effectively banned, as though Palestinian solidarity itself is a driver of antisemitic violence. Crimethink 101: solidarity with the oppressed makes you an oppressor. And the oppressor, well, they’re actually the oppressed. That is the blueprint of the dominant narrative.

This is not about protecting Jewish people. It is about criminalising dissent and insulating Israel from criticism. Language is being policed and syntax might put you in jail if you struggle with it.

Might I add that as someone whose mother tongue is Arabic, I find it absurd when Britain, a ‘previous’ colonial power that has shaped my current lived reality, starts outlawing words from my language. I find this display of contempt for Arabic horrifying.

Fear is redirected downward, never upward

This atmosphere also feeds a deeply dangerous conflation — one that Israel actively encourages: the idea that Israel represents Jews everywhere.

It does not. And insisting otherwise is antisemitic.

According to Rick Kuhn, an Australian Jewish economist and political analyst:

The conflation of Judaism, a religion, with Zionism, a political ideology, in definitions of antisemitism, is itself antisemitic.

Jewish voices who reject Zionism, who oppose Israeli apartheid, who refuse to be used as human shields for a genocidal state, are routinely ignored or attacked. They are labeled as ‘self-hating Jews’ if they don’t fit the narrative. Only Netanyahu and his cronies are allowed to speak for ‘the Jews’ in mainstream discourse. Everyone else is erased.

And that erasure is not accidental. It serves Israeli power.

This is also why Israel’s long history of covert operations, disinformation, and false-flag activity matters — not as proof of responsibility in this one, but as context. Now we’re not saying it did… we’re not saying it didn’t… But when a state has repeatedly manipulated violence and narrative for strategic gain, scepticism is rational, not conspiratorial. Specifically, that ISIS claimed responsibility, and ISIS and the West have a more than curious relationship. Particularly given that ISIS and Israel have warmed up to each other during the genocide.

An article written by Skwawkbox two days before the Bondi beach massacre headlined:

Warnings over Hamas ‘attacking Europe’ rumours: preparation for Israeli false flags?

Is this completely coincidental? Is this man a visionary? Or have Israeli covert operations become too predictable?

Strip away the sectarian mask and the picture becomes clear

This is not Jews versus Muslims. Nor is it religions at war. It is empire defending itself. It is a settler-colonial state exploiting fear to regain the moral ground it has lost. And, it is Western governments seizing another excuse to clamp down on dissent while continuing to arm and protect Israel.

We see you Keir Starmer, you microwave head.

The real danger isn’t that people argue about identity. It’s that they stop talking about power. In this light, sectarianism becomes a weapon of mass distraction.

When tragedy is looked at through the lens of sectarianism, empire disappears — and that is unfortunately exactly the point.

Featured image via Dohain Institute

By Jamal Awar

This post was originally published on Canary.