Progressive overreach is driving us into a caste based social order. Following, politics has turned into a client/patron system of delivering spoils to groups in return for electoral support - this is the obvious reason the govt is so weak in response to this issue.
I take your point about a caste based system. The first time I realised this was when someone told me off (about 7 years ago) for writing about native title. I said, “Does your answer change if I have Indigenous ancestry?” They said it did. Then I said, “What if I didn’t know I had Indigneous ancestry when I wrote that piece?” (which was in fact the case). They were stymied. It was quite ridiculous. Why would my perspective miraculously have more value because of who my great-great-great grandfather was?
Thank you for writing this, Katy — for the restraint, the depth, and the refusal to turn grief into spectacle. This felt like an act of care.
We’ll actually be headed to Sydney for a month, starting in about a month, and reading this while thinking about arriving into that landscape — one that holds both beauty and rupture — landed very close to home. Your insistence on memory, on continuity, and on Australia’s humanist, anti-sectarian inheritance felt grounding rather than nostalgic. Not a denial of harm, but a reminder of what has been possible before — and therefore what still is.
I also appreciate your refusal to name the perpetrators. Letting the dead be remembered and the wicked rot feels like a moral clarity we’ve lost touch with.
I just wrote a piece on awareness — not fear, not vigilance-as-performance — but the quieter practice of moving through the world with eyes open and nervous systems intact. It’s been my way of thinking through how we live alongside horrors like Bondi without becoming either alarmist or numb. Tomorrow’s follow-up is even more practical, but this is the foundation if you’re curious:
Your post reminded me that awareness is not only about risk — it’s about remembering who we are when we show up for one another. Thank you for anchoring this moment in history, humility, and shared humanity.
Thank you for this, one of the rare pieces that focusses on who Australians are as people and how this event was an assault on us all. We have both beauty and ugliness in our shared history, we can acknowledge both of those aspects in our past. My fondest memories of growing up in Sydney (eastern suburbs) was the egalitarianess, it didn't matter where you came from but who you were, and how you treated others. I hope we can regain that spirit, because sadly I think it is slipping away.
I imagine there are things we don't agree on, traditions we do not share. I'm politically progressive and non-religious, and I find the colonial legacy of the UK (where I live) sickening. But I agree with what I think is the central point of your essay – that there is more to connect us through our common humanity than divides us through religious or cultural differences.
I feel very much the same.
I wasn't aware of the speech you quoted, but I'm not surprised by the connection between your family and Jews, going back as far as it does. It makes sense that someone who inherits that legacy would write a piece like this. Although, as you say in the comments, its what you think and do and say now that matters, not your lineage.
On that note, the spectacle, the noise, and the assumptions that followed what happened in Bondi trouble me. I can see they're troubling some other people posting here, too. Whilst I'm not sure about the discussions re identity/caste, and I definitely do agree with Stephen's argument that all of Islam is the problem, I am very grateful to find someone opening a calm, respectful and meaningful conversation about all this.
So, again, thank you. I wasn't at Bondi. I didn't have to run from bullets, but I know what it means to fear antisemitic attacks, and I know that unity and connection are the only answer.
My first non-Indigenous ancestor to come to Australia on my father’s side was a pickpocket called George Barnett, from the East End. Mum and Dad visited the site of his crime in London some years back. He had stolen a pocket handkerchief. He ended up living a long and happy life in Sydney, marrying another convict and having seven children.
Many of my ancestors suffered, not only the nameless Indigenous man who was my great-great-great grandfather, but also the Irish who starved in the potato famine, the Scots who were cleared from their ancestral lands, the convicts who had no choice but to come here, and so forth. For a while in my teens, I bore the English a grudge, even though I lived in Manchester and loved it there, and loved my English friends. I bear a grudge no longer. Peace comes in letting go. I can’t blame people for what their ancestors did: the sins of the fathers should not be visited on the children. All I can do is try to change people’s attitudes by my own behaviour. Here is a post I wrote on how and why my thoughts changed. https://www.whatkatydid.net/p/repost-on-victimhood
Many people have different beliefs and practices to me. That doesn’t mean they are bad people, as long as they respect others. I am just curious about humanity and about people who are different to me. Thanks for your comment and for directing me to your post. I hope one day you can visit our beautiful country.
Why is the Jewish community always placed above the Muslim community? Yes, the Jewish community has been here for a long time, but the presence of Muslims pre-dates 1788, pre-dates federation and pre-dates many other communities. Without early Muslim pioneers, specially the cameleers who navigated Australia, Australia would be a different looking country.
Why is this fact always, perhaps deliberately, overlooked to always give the impression that Muslims are new arrivals and to lessen their value?
I’m not placing any community above any other. You’re the one who sees a hierarchy where there is none.
At the moment, the people who need to be reassured that they belong here and are welcome are Australian Jews. Yes, Muslims also have a history in Australia. But that wasn’t the point of this post. The point of this post was about Jewish history.
If I wanted to write a post about Muslim history it would look quite different. It would also point out a long but different history - interestingly, one of the parliamentarians involved in the fundraising I mention in this post was a keen supporter of Australian Muslims as well as Jews.
I didn't mean to target it at you. It was a more general observation regarding to emerging social commentary. The difference between the responses to Bondi and those to Christchurch, could not be more stark.
Understood. I do think that if a group of Muslim revellers and children were shot on Bondi Beach by terrorists, I would react in exactly the same way. No one should *ever* be shot at a party on the beach simply because they follow a particular religion or are a member of a particular group.
The thing that struck me was how many people who were involved - from Reuven Morrison to Ahmed Al Ahmed - were people who came here for a better life, free from this. That’s part of why I found it so very distressing. They thought they were safe and they were not.
No, Islam is the problem, those who commit terrible crimes like Bondi are really just devout Moslems doing what the Koran exhorts them to do - kill or enslave the infidels.
The only way out of this is stop all Islamic immigration and get as many as possible of those already here to self deport. If we have to pay them to leave it will be cheap in the long term.
Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western Civilisation.
There is clearly a problem with preachers such as Wissam Haddad—he seems to have radicalised the perpetrators—and that should be faced squarely, not dodged. After all there was a Federal Court judgment against Haddad.
However, I would never blame an entire group for the sins of a few. Take individuals as they come, and judge them by their behaviour. I’m happy to have someone like Ahmed El Ahmed as part of our society. I know that’s not de rigueur these days, but it’s how I operate.
I agree with your comments Katy, and I think that there is a massive low-hanging fruit to just kicking people like Haddad or these two scum out of the country (my view has always been that if you want to sympathise with EI, Hamas, or anything jihad whatsoever, that's treason and you should lose your citizenship. If that makes someone stateless, well I really don't care), or at least subject them and their close companions to constant monitoring, forever. We have chosen so many times these last few decades that everyone should suffer more so that specific individuals can escape the consequences of their actions.
I am sympathetic to the idea that we should "blame the group" insofar as refusing entry to people from countries with very poor track records, which includes, of course, where these two idiots came from, and most likely where Haddad or his family came from (since it would include all of the southern Mediterranean countries except Israel!).
But, whilst people from those countries should certainly be subject to extremely high scrutiny before being allowed to enter the country, even that would not help so much, since the bigger problem is the ones that are here now. We just need to be willing to actually focus on the problem, which is not and never has been "far right" anything, and to punish the specific individuals involved.
"Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.
We absolutely must be realistic and face the dangers of Islamist thought. It is actually doing Muslims a favour to recognise it: it is they who die at the greatest numbers at the hands of Islamists. These people hold their own people hostage, as in Gaza itself.
The issue comes down to how individual Muslims and different groups interpret “jihad”. For as long as it justifies violence towards those categorised as unbelievers (not just internal spiritual struggle, as in does in some strands of Islam), there will be individuals and groups who pose a danger to both their own communities and other communities. The thing that gets me is “progressive” people supporting groups like Hamas. Do they know what Hamas’s beliefs are? Have they actually thought about this at all, or have they just imposed a vague, simplistic “oppressed/oppressor” binary, ignoring the nuances of history? It makes me so mad.
I sort of agree however I believe there is no Islamism or Radical Islam, there's only Islam, both the Turkish and Pakistani PM's have said this. Those who do the bad stuff are simply very devout Moslems doing what the Koran exhorts them to do - convert, subjugate, enslave or kill the Kuffars. I believe it's that simple, the problem is that they truly believe the Koran to be the direct Word of God, unmediated. If that is true then what choice do the devout have. That's why mainstream Moslems rarely say much about the terror, they know that's what the Book says. Another big factor is Taqiyya, Moslems are required to lie in the defence of the religion and they use that a lot, way more than Westerners would believe. Honestly when it comes to Islam you must take the word of the terrorists as true and those who argue that the devout are not following True Islam as lying in defence of Islam.
Progressive overreach is driving us into a caste based social order. Following, politics has turned into a client/patron system of delivering spoils to groups in return for electoral support - this is the obvious reason the govt is so weak in response to this issue.
I take your point about a caste based system. The first time I realised this was when someone told me off (about 7 years ago) for writing about native title. I said, “Does your answer change if I have Indigenous ancestry?” They said it did. Then I said, “What if I didn’t know I had Indigneous ancestry when I wrote that piece?” (which was in fact the case). They were stymied. It was quite ridiculous. Why would my perspective miraculously have more value because of who my great-great-great grandfather was?
That's wonderful, a true paradox of identity crime 😆
I tend to flummox people. I have a whole bunch of identity cards which I have never used. I hope my work speaks for itself, regardless of who I am.
Thank you for writing this, Katy — for the restraint, the depth, and the refusal to turn grief into spectacle. This felt like an act of care.
We’ll actually be headed to Sydney for a month, starting in about a month, and reading this while thinking about arriving into that landscape — one that holds both beauty and rupture — landed very close to home. Your insistence on memory, on continuity, and on Australia’s humanist, anti-sectarian inheritance felt grounding rather than nostalgic. Not a denial of harm, but a reminder of what has been possible before — and therefore what still is.
I also appreciate your refusal to name the perpetrators. Letting the dead be remembered and the wicked rot feels like a moral clarity we’ve lost touch with.
I just wrote a piece on awareness — not fear, not vigilance-as-performance — but the quieter practice of moving through the world with eyes open and nervous systems intact. It’s been my way of thinking through how we live alongside horrors like Bondi without becoming either alarmist or numb. Tomorrow’s follow-up is even more practical, but this is the foundation if you’re curious:
https://thebenthalls.substack.com/p/sun-free-moving-through-the-world
Your post reminded me that awareness is not only about risk — it’s about remembering who we are when we show up for one another. Thank you for anchoring this moment in history, humility, and shared humanity.
– Kelly
Thank you so much for your lovely comment! I’ll go check out your post.
This was lovely, well done finding such a positive but not completely bullshit message in all this !
Thank you. I had to sit on it for a week - I have been very upset.
I'm sure that's an understatement, it was so sad, and that very sadness made it so much more infuriating.
English understatement, indeed. Heartbroken would better express my feelings.
Fascinating. Thank you for writing this
And from me, Katy
Thank you for this, one of the rare pieces that focusses on who Australians are as people and how this event was an assault on us all. We have both beauty and ugliness in our shared history, we can acknowledge both of those aspects in our past. My fondest memories of growing up in Sydney (eastern suburbs) was the egalitarianess, it didn't matter where you came from but who you were, and how you treated others. I hope we can regain that spirit, because sadly I think it is slipping away.
I want to remind people of this.
From this Jew - thank you, Katy.
I imagine there are things we don't agree on, traditions we do not share. I'm politically progressive and non-religious, and I find the colonial legacy of the UK (where I live) sickening. But I agree with what I think is the central point of your essay – that there is more to connect us through our common humanity than divides us through religious or cultural differences.
I feel very much the same.
I wasn't aware of the speech you quoted, but I'm not surprised by the connection between your family and Jews, going back as far as it does. It makes sense that someone who inherits that legacy would write a piece like this. Although, as you say in the comments, its what you think and do and say now that matters, not your lineage.
On that note, the spectacle, the noise, and the assumptions that followed what happened in Bondi trouble me. I can see they're troubling some other people posting here, too. Whilst I'm not sure about the discussions re identity/caste, and I definitely do agree with Stephen's argument that all of Islam is the problem, I am very grateful to find someone opening a calm, respectful and meaningful conversation about all this.
So, again, thank you. I wasn't at Bondi. I didn't have to run from bullets, but I know what it means to fear antisemitic attacks, and I know that unity and connection are the only answer.
If you're interested, this is my (also not hot) take on Bondi and the historical, personal and polticial ghosts it raised for me: https://bendickenson.substack.com/p/50-by-60-6-light-after-bondi-fear
My first non-Indigenous ancestor to come to Australia on my father’s side was a pickpocket called George Barnett, from the East End. Mum and Dad visited the site of his crime in London some years back. He had stolen a pocket handkerchief. He ended up living a long and happy life in Sydney, marrying another convict and having seven children.
Many of my ancestors suffered, not only the nameless Indigenous man who was my great-great-great grandfather, but also the Irish who starved in the potato famine, the Scots who were cleared from their ancestral lands, the convicts who had no choice but to come here, and so forth. For a while in my teens, I bore the English a grudge, even though I lived in Manchester and loved it there, and loved my English friends. I bear a grudge no longer. Peace comes in letting go. I can’t blame people for what their ancestors did: the sins of the fathers should not be visited on the children. All I can do is try to change people’s attitudes by my own behaviour. Here is a post I wrote on how and why my thoughts changed. https://www.whatkatydid.net/p/repost-on-victimhood
Many people have different beliefs and practices to me. That doesn’t mean they are bad people, as long as they respect others. I am just curious about humanity and about people who are different to me. Thanks for your comment and for directing me to your post. I hope one day you can visit our beautiful country.
Why is the Jewish community always placed above the Muslim community? Yes, the Jewish community has been here for a long time, but the presence of Muslims pre-dates 1788, pre-dates federation and pre-dates many other communities. Without early Muslim pioneers, specially the cameleers who navigated Australia, Australia would be a different looking country.
Why is this fact always, perhaps deliberately, overlooked to always give the impression that Muslims are new arrivals and to lessen their value?
I’m not placing any community above any other. You’re the one who sees a hierarchy where there is none.
At the moment, the people who need to be reassured that they belong here and are welcome are Australian Jews. Yes, Muslims also have a history in Australia. But that wasn’t the point of this post. The point of this post was about Jewish history.
If I wanted to write a post about Muslim history it would look quite different. It would also point out a long but different history - interestingly, one of the parliamentarians involved in the fundraising I mention in this post was a keen supporter of Australian Muslims as well as Jews.
I didn't mean to target it at you. It was a more general observation regarding to emerging social commentary. The difference between the responses to Bondi and those to Christchurch, could not be more stark.
Understood. I do think that if a group of Muslim revellers and children were shot on Bondi Beach by terrorists, I would react in exactly the same way. No one should *ever* be shot at a party on the beach simply because they follow a particular religion or are a member of a particular group.
The thing that struck me was how many people who were involved - from Reuven Morrison to Ahmed Al Ahmed - were people who came here for a better life, free from this. That’s part of why I found it so very distressing. They thought they were safe and they were not.
No, Islam is the problem, those who commit terrible crimes like Bondi are really just devout Moslems doing what the Koran exhorts them to do - kill or enslave the infidels.
The only way out of this is stop all Islamic immigration and get as many as possible of those already here to self deport. If we have to pay them to leave it will be cheap in the long term.
Islam is fundamentally incompatible with Western Civilisation.
There is clearly a problem with preachers such as Wissam Haddad—he seems to have radicalised the perpetrators—and that should be faced squarely, not dodged. After all there was a Federal Court judgment against Haddad.
However, I would never blame an entire group for the sins of a few. Take individuals as they come, and judge them by their behaviour. I’m happy to have someone like Ahmed El Ahmed as part of our society. I know that’s not de rigueur these days, but it’s how I operate.
I agree with your comments Katy, and I think that there is a massive low-hanging fruit to just kicking people like Haddad or these two scum out of the country (my view has always been that if you want to sympathise with EI, Hamas, or anything jihad whatsoever, that's treason and you should lose your citizenship. If that makes someone stateless, well I really don't care), or at least subject them and their close companions to constant monitoring, forever. We have chosen so many times these last few decades that everyone should suffer more so that specific individuals can escape the consequences of their actions.
I am sympathetic to the idea that we should "blame the group" insofar as refusing entry to people from countries with very poor track records, which includes, of course, where these two idiots came from, and most likely where Haddad or his family came from (since it would include all of the southern Mediterranean countries except Israel!).
But, whilst people from those countries should certainly be subject to extremely high scrutiny before being allowed to enter the country, even that would not help so much, since the bigger problem is the ones that are here now. We just need to be willing to actually focus on the problem, which is not and never has been "far right" anything, and to punish the specific individuals involved.
Churchill said it best, I have to agree with him.
"Individual Muslims may show splendid qualities, but the influence of the religion paralyses the social development of those who follow it. No stronger retrograde force exists in the world. Far from being moribund, Mohammedanism is a militant and proselytizing faith. It has already spread throughout Central Africa, raising fearless warriors at every step; and were it not that Christianity is sheltered in the strong arms of science, the science against which it had vainly struggled, the civilization of modern Europe might fall, as fell the civilization of ancient Rome.
We absolutely must be realistic and face the dangers of Islamist thought. It is actually doing Muslims a favour to recognise it: it is they who die at the greatest numbers at the hands of Islamists. These people hold their own people hostage, as in Gaza itself.
The issue comes down to how individual Muslims and different groups interpret “jihad”. For as long as it justifies violence towards those categorised as unbelievers (not just internal spiritual struggle, as in does in some strands of Islam), there will be individuals and groups who pose a danger to both their own communities and other communities. The thing that gets me is “progressive” people supporting groups like Hamas. Do they know what Hamas’s beliefs are? Have they actually thought about this at all, or have they just imposed a vague, simplistic “oppressed/oppressor” binary, ignoring the nuances of history? It makes me so mad.
You're spot on about Moslems killing other Moslems, it's a sad truth but that's how seriously they take the Book.
I sort of agree however I believe there is no Islamism or Radical Islam, there's only Islam, both the Turkish and Pakistani PM's have said this. Those who do the bad stuff are simply very devout Moslems doing what the Koran exhorts them to do - convert, subjugate, enslave or kill the Kuffars. I believe it's that simple, the problem is that they truly believe the Koran to be the direct Word of God, unmediated. If that is true then what choice do the devout have. That's why mainstream Moslems rarely say much about the terror, they know that's what the Book says. Another big factor is Taqiyya, Moslems are required to lie in the defence of the religion and they use that a lot, way more than Westerners would believe. Honestly when it comes to Islam you must take the word of the terrorists as true and those who argue that the devout are not following True Islam as lying in defence of Islam.