Australian Critics of Israel Failed to Condemn Oct. 7, Other Antisemitic Incidents around the World

PHILADELPHIA, Pennsylvania —  “The world’s gone mad,” said Greg Mullins, 66, as he joined a massive march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

“I don’t want my kids telling me what were you doing when this mass murder and genocide was going on,” adds Ian Robertson,74. “It’s horrific and awful. We can’t bear watching it.”

Mullins and Robertson were protesting Israel’s military actions and starvation in Gaza along with 25,000 other Australians last Sunday, Aug. 3, according to a J-Wire news report. Nothing “horrific and awful” mentioned for the massacre of 1,200 Israelis by terrorists in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023.

Nor did the world go mad when a Manhattan activist justified Oct. 7, when Russia lectured Israel for bombing innocent citizens or when three cars were burned near the St. Louis family home of a member of the Israel Defense Forces. Not to mention other anti-Israel and/or anti-Jewish incidents in the past few weeks.

Mullin and Robertson reflect the hypocrisy of their fellow Israel-bashers. In just the past week, anti-Israel activists did not bother with the many shades of gray in this conflict. They abided by their rigid belief: Hamas good, Israel bad.

We can sympathize with the people of Gaza for their deaths and starvation, and even criticize the Israeli government when warranted, but their advocates in America, Australia and elsewhere have frequently lied, leveled baseless accusations against Israel, avoided blame for Hamas, violated the law, endangered the public and even became violent.

They run a one-sided crusade, rarely mentioning the hostages, the mental and physical scars of survivors, the grief of the families, the destruction of facilities in southern Israel and Hamas’ Attila the Hun-style of brutality.

Back to Oct. 7, did Robertson not “want my kids telling me what were you doing when this mass murder and genocide was going on”? Did Mullins think “the world’s gone mad” when terrorists burned, raped and murdered 1,200 Israelis?

Two days after the march in Sydney, the world was treated to the spectacle of a Russian spokesman lecturing Israel at the United Nations notwithstanding his own nation’s unrelenting attacks on Ukraine.

In Kyiv in the past few weeks, 23-year-old Veronika Osintseva miraculously survived a missile strike on her apartment building. Her parents did not survive it. They were among 28 people, five of them children, who were killed in the blast, according to The New York Times.

Did Mullins and Robertson march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge to protest Russia’s murder sprees? Or wasn’t that horrific and awful enough?

On the same day that Russia’s spokesman testified, police discovered that three cars were set on fire in Clayton, Missouri, near the family home of an IDF soldier, the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reports.

The street was graffitied with the phrase “Death to the IDF,” drone footage from a local news outlet showed.

The block is home to a family whose son recently finished two years in the IDF and has publicly discussed his service in Gaza and Lebanon.

“When somebody says they want to take this fight to Jews around the world they mean everywhere,” said Jordan Kadosh, the local director of the Anti-Defamation League, as quoted by the JTA.

“When you hear somebody say ‘globalize the intifada’ this is what it looks like…burned out cars on suburban streets on America,” he added.

Are Mullins and Robertson so far gone that they would “globalize the intifada” to Clayton, a suburb adjacent to St. Louis?

What would their children say about their silence of the arson in Clayton, the beating of a Jewish man in Montreal and court proceedings over the assault of a pro-Israel demonstrator in Newton, Massachusetts, outside Boston?

The Oct. 7 assault by Hamas on Israel was understandable, claimed the notorious Mahmoud Khalil during an interview on Ezra Klein’s podcast, also the same day as the United Nations session, The New York Post reports.

“It felt frightening that we had to reach this moment in the Palestinian struggle,” Khalil told Klein, a New York Times journalist, who then asked, “What do you mean we had to reach this moment? What moment is this?”

“You have an Israeli government that’s absolutely ignoring Palestinians,” said Khalil, whom President Trump has tried to deport because of his role in pro-Palestinian protests at Columbia University. “They are trying to make that deal with Saudi and just happy about their Abraham Accord without looking at Palestinians – as if Palestinians are not part of the equation.

“It was clear that it was becoming more and more violent,” he continued. “By Oct. 6, over 200 Palestinians were killed by Israeli forces and settlers. Over 40 of them were children. So that’s what I mean by: Unfortunately, we couldn’t avoid such a moment.”

He added, “Just to break the cycle, to break that Palestinians are not being heard…It’s a desperate attempt to tell the world that Palestinians are here.”

Like most Israel-bashers, Khalil neglects to recount that Israel proposed an independent state during a summit at Camp David hosted by President Clinton a quarter-century ago. Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat was unresponsive to the offer, and when he returned home he started or facilitated a bloody uprising.

Will Mullins and Robertson accept Khalil’s explanation to justify Hamas’ day of “mass murder and genocide”?

Most supporters of Israel will automatically dub these men “useful idiots.” To be generous, let’s call them misguided.  We can only hope that they can empathize as much for Israeli victims in a world “gone mad.”