As Australia approaches the one-year anniversary of the Bondi massacre, a new book aims to set the narrative for the attack itself and why it happened. Written by Murdoch News24 and The Australian journalist Sharri Markson and pro-Israel lobbyist Alex Ryvchin, Bondi Terror is a political weapon wrapped in seemingly innocent packaging.
The roughly first half of the book tells the before, during and after the 14 December 2025 slaughter at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, allegedly committed by father-son ISIS extremists. Parts of this section are moving, haunting and highly disturbing. Fifteen innocent civilians were murdered on that day in a hateful act of anti-Semitism and politicised violence.
But the second part of the book claims to explain why the massacre happened and this is where it runs into troubling assumptions, deeply relevant to Declassified Australia’s perspective.
Markson and Ryvchin claim that it was “inevitable” an attack on Australian Jews would happen because the warning signs were ignored by the Albanese government. Pro-Palestine protests, including the historic march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge that saw up to 300,000 Australians calling for an end to the genocide in Gaza, are viewed as a deliberate provocation in the face of Zionist, Jewish Australians, causing unease and danger. The solution? Prosecutions for daring to oppose Israeli actions, a foreign nation on the other side of the world, that some Jews view as their “homeland.”
Intelligence failures are examined, and it’s legitimate to ask if signs were missed about the alleged killers, but only “official” voices are heard and interviewed from the heart of the intelligence apparatus, rather than more sceptical perspectives who could expose genuine criticisms of the intelligence and security agencies as well as the bloated budgets and narratives that are prevalent in the Murdoch world. The former ASIO source, Marcus, could shine a light on what he claims are the profound failures of his former employer.
The book barely discusses what’s been happening in Gaza, the West Bank, Lebanon, Syria, Iran or across the Middle East since October 7 2023, beyond explaining that Israel was attacked by Hamas and has been fighting a defensive war ever since.
In this worldview, it’s impossible to imagine why so many Australians are outraged with the daily violence, humiliation, torture, rape and mass murder of Palestinians by the Israeli army, often filmed for entertainment by Israeli soldiers and posted on social media. If a person supports these actions, denies them or argues that they’re justified, and I hear this argument often in the Zionist world, any opposition to Israel is dismissed as anti-Semitism and warranting of censure.
The book was launched by News Corp chairman Lachlan Murdoch and celebrated by his many outlets. Unspoken by him or the book but certainly implied is that a majority of Australians who now oppose Israeli violence, according to a recent Pew poll, fail to understand that Jewish Australians face unprecedented threats and demonisation, though they argue through no fault of their own.
There’s little to no reckoning with the fact that every self-described mainstream Zionist organisation in Australia, and across the world, has offered full-throated backing of Netanyahu’s war, with barely any opposition to the litany of war crimes that Israeli soldiers have committed. This will come with a cost in our society.
I’ve lost count of the number of people asking me why these hardline Jewish groups don’t see Palestinians deserving to live. Israelis are therefore seen as heartless killers, a dangerous, though not untrue impression, that shows the catastrophe of Zionism and its toxic reality.
Anti-Semitism is real, worrying and worsening but the solution isn’t to bully or shut down critical voices – the pro-Israel lobby specialises in these activities and then wonders why they’re so hated in the wider community – but encourage a robust discussion on the actions of a nation whose Prime Minister is wanted by the International Criminal Court for alleged crimes against humanity.
If freedom of speech means anything, it must include the right to condemn a state on the other side of the planet that’s committing war crimes with the assistance of Australian F-35 fighter jet parts.
A moral reckoning in the mainstream Jewish community must address how and why so many prominent Jews have fully backed Netanyahu’s scorched earth policies in Palestine. This book doesn’t want to have that conversation, preferring to focus on the Bondi massacre and the pro-Palestine majority who despise Israel, not Jews, for flattening Gaza in the name of self-defence.
What happened at Bondi on 14 December last year was an abomination, showing the dangers of radicalisation in the name of Islamist piety.
But a complete unwillingness to even engage on what Zionism is and how it’s brutally practiced in the West Bank and Gaza turns this book into a political document that could be used to silence anybody who dares challenge Netanyahu and his government of far-right fanatics. Many backers of the Royal Commission on anti-Semitism and Social Cohesion clearly want legal restrictions on speech around Israel, Zionism and Palestine.
Australians deserve better.
Judaism has been defamed in the name of the Israeli occupation. It only helps the Jewish supremacist agenda to acquiesce in its continuation.
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