A Jewish woman wearing a Keffiyeh as well as the Star of David was escorted off Bondi Beach by police. The resulting social media storm led to death threats to her and to her friend.

I am writing this knowing it will likely result in more death threats.

That is not a metaphor. It is a statement of fact, based on what happened to my friend Michelle and me this week, and what happened next when we sought protection from the state.

On Monday, at the Bondi memorial for the victims of the mass killing the day before, Michelle – a Jewish local and member of Jews against the Occupation ‘48– was surrounded by a hostile crowd shouting “get her off”. She was escorted off the beach to the sound of applause by approximately forty police officers, whilst trying to explain her position to the surrounding reporters, and taken to Bondi Police Station, where she was told she couldn’t go back to Bondi Beach for 6 hours.

Her “offence”? Wearing a Keffiyeh.

Whether one agrees with her politics or not is beside the point. The memorial was dominated by Israeli flags – the flag of a state currently accused of genocide and whose leaders are wanted for war crimes. Michelle wore the keffiyeh because she objected to a moment of mourning being politicised. But it is not a crime. Nor is it a provocation warranting mob intimidation.

What followed should concern anyone who believes the rule of law applies equally.

After video footage of Michelle circulated on X, under a post by journalist Hugh Riminton, the abuse escalated rapidly.

What was not mentioned – despite Michelle wearing a visible Star of David and explicitly stating to the press that she is Jewish – was that she is a Jewish local who grew up in Bondi. That omission mattered.

I replied publicly on X to clarify that Michelle is Jewish, that she is my friend, and that she is part of JAO48. While those responses received hundreds of supportive comments, they also unleashed some of the most extreme antisemitic, misogynistic, ageist and Islamophobic abuse I have encountered in years of public advocacy.

I can deal with online abuse on social media. The block button is my friend.

Threats arrived in my email inbox – not via social media, but via my direct contact form and messaging linked to my business. One message stated that Michelle was “now wishing she had stayed home” and warned, “I would not want to be her”.

The individual who contacted me used the name “Brenton Tarrant”, the name of the Christchurch mass murderer, writing that I “deserve a bullet in the head”, and that Michelle would be “hunted down”, and that because her address was doxxed, it would make “putting a claw hammer in her skull even easier.”

This was enough intimidation for me to call 000 and for two members of the Chatswood station to attend my home. The expressions on their faces when they read the messages were of shock and disgust.

More concerning was that Michelle’s home address had been published online in response to Riminton’s post. On Monday night, she went to Maroubra Police Station to report she’d been doxxed.

And nothing happened. She wasn’t contacted the next day or given a case number. Nothing.

When we returned to Maroubra Police Station two days later to ask what action had been taken regarding the doxxing and threats, the attending constable

could not even find a record of Michelle having gone there on Monday night.

There was a record of the death threats I received from Chatswood Police Station, but that doesn’t help someone whose life is in danger in Maroubra.

A Jewish woman, escorted by dozens of police officers, detained at a police station under threat of violence, had no record in the system days later. Had something happened to her in the intervening period, there would have been no official trace of her presence or vulnerability.

This is not a paperwork error. This is a systemic failure.

The irony is sharp enough to cut. NSW’s doxxing laws were introduced following sustained lobbying about online threats directed at Zionist Jews. Those laws were framed as urgent protections against harm.

Yet here we have a Jewish woman who is anti-Zionist, whose address was published, who received death threats, and whose case appears to have been ignored entirely.

Only after I explicitly raised the double standard to a young constable – only after pointing out how differently this would have been handled had Michelle been a Zionist Jew – was a report finally entered into the system. I also demanded that police investigate the instigator of the doxxing. Whether the individual can ultimately be identified is beside the point. The absence of effort is the issue.

For the past two days, doxxing has again been raised publicly as an urgent threat – but apparently only when the victims align with a particular political identity.

This failure is made even more disturbing by the broader amplification of risk.

The omission of Michelle’s Jewish identity among all the abuse matters. Not because her Judaism should confer protection or legitimacy – it should not have to – but because it fuelled a narrative that made her a target. The implication was clear:

she was an outsider, an agitator, someone deserving of removal.

It should not matter who she is. It should not matter what she believes. Wearing a keffiyeh is no more illegal than waving the flag of a state accused of mass atrocities.

What should matter is this: no one attending a memorial should be threatened with death, have their home address exposed, or be left unprotected by the police.

If that standard only applies to some Jews, then it is not protection at all. It is political preference enforced by the state.

And if writing this results in more threats, then that fact alone tells you how broken our public discourse – and our institutions – have become.

Fifteen people are dead. Around forty are injured. Families and communities are grieving. But within hours, the event was weaponised.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu blamed the Albanese government. Jillian Segal linked the massacre with the March for Humanity on the Harbour Bridge.

Josh Frydenberg re-emerged, positioning himself as a future Prime Minister on the back of mass death, although suggesting this is the case is “highly offensive” to him.

 guess to Josh, it’s irrelevant that the father in the father/son terrorist team arrived in ’98 when Howard was PM, he gained his gun license in 2015 when Abbott was PM, and the ASIO investigation into the son was dropped in 2019 when Morrison was PM.

And now, as a result of this horrific terrorist attack on Sunday, the calls to ban pro-Palestine protests are louder than ever.

If anybody can possibly think that Palestinians, Muslims, indeed even humanitarians who object to genocide had anything to gain from a mass shooting, “they’ve got rocks in their head”, as we say in Australia. If anything, the events of this week

show precisely why dissent must be protected.

When anti-Zionist Jews can be threatened with death, doxxed, misrepresented as terrorists, and left without protection by the state, the danger is not protest – it is repression.

If writing this results in further threats, that fact alone will confirm the point.

It is not safety for all that is being prioritised in this country. It’s not even safety for all Jews that is being prioritised. What dark days we are living in.

Member of Jews Against the Occupation
Written by a member of Jews Against Occupation '48 Australia who is known to Michael West Media.

https://michaelwest.com.au/gun-vs-keffiyeh-one-kills-the-other-gets-you-death-threats/

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Heavy rains and gale-force winds have turned life-threatening for Palestinians in Gaza, where the destruction of housing and restrictions on aid have left millions without shelter.

Makeshift tents billowing furiously in the wind. Children wading through ankle-high water. A young boy futilely beating back an oncoming wave with nothing but a broom.

These are just a few of the scenes that came out of Gaza in recent days as its population of nearly two million people was beset by heavy rainfall and punishing winds from Storm Byron, which hit late last week.

According to the United Nations’ Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA) in Jerusalem, more than 1.3 million Palestinians in the territory are  without proper shelter following more than two years of relentless Israeli bombing, which destroyed or damaged over 90 per cent of housing units.

“The conditions are catastrophic, I must say,” Jonathan Crickx, the chief of communication for the UN Children’s Fund, told PBS News. “I’ve been in many, many tents in the past two days, and the tents are completely flooded. I met with tens of children. Their clothes are wet, the mattresses in the tents are completely soaked. And those children, they are cold.”

At least three children, including two infants and a nine-year-old, died from hypothermia or cold exposure within a 24-hour period. Another five were crushed after a house sheltering displaced civilians collapsed due to the storm. As of Friday, at least 14 people were reported dead from the storm, and several more are injured, according to Gaza’s Ministry of Interior and National Security.

“Civilians are now wading through sewage, mud, and debris, with no proper shelter,” said Bushra Khalidi, the policy lead for Oxfam in the occupied Palestinian territories. “This is not a failure of preparedness or capacity; it’s the direct result of the systematic obstruction of aid.”

“The Israeli authorities continue to block the entry of basic shelter materials, fuel, and water infrastructure, leaving people exposed to entirely preventable harm,” Khalidi continued. “When access is denied, storms become deadly. This suffering is being manufactured by policy, not weather.”

Under the terms of the “ceasefire” agreement signed between Israel and Hamas in October, Israel was required to allow more than 600 trucks carrying humanitarian aid to enter Gaza each day. But according to  UN data published earlier this month, just 113 trucks per day on average have been allowed to enter the strip, less than a fifth of the agreed-upon amount.

The Rafah crossing, the largest entry point for aid, still remains almost totally closed after being opened briefly during the first week of the ceasefire. Israel said earlier this month that it may soon reopen the crossing, but only to allow for the exit of Palestinians.

“Without question, the Israelis and their persistent bureaucracy have prevented us from bringing in the necessary shelter that would provide adequate dwellings for the people living in Gaza,” said Chris McIntosh, Oxfam’s humanitarian response adviser in the territory.

In the crowded coastal area of al-Mawasi, he said, some residents have been left with little to protect themselves from the elements but blankets and flimsy tarpaulin.

“Obviously, a blanket is not going to do much against torrential downpours and winds that are at nearly gale force,” he said. “The Israelis have not permitted these tents to enter the Gaza Strip, not for many months… The population is bracing for a very, very tragic situation right now.”

Official estimates put the death toll in Gaza at more than 70,600 since October 7, 2023, including more than 300 who have been killed during the ceasefire period across hundreds of attacks by Israel in violation of the agreement. But other independent studies, which take indirect effects of the genocide, like malnutrition and disease, into account, place the death toll much higher.

https://www.commondreams.org/news/gaza-winter-storm-byron-blockade

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YOURDEMOCRACY.NET RECORDS HISTORY AS IT SHOULD BE — NOT AS THE WESTERN MEDIA WRONGLY REPORTS IT — SINCE 2005.

         Gus Leonisky

         POLITICAL CARTOONIST SINCE 1951.