SATISH SHARMA - not just Rotigraphy.: It is extraordinary that Netanyahu’s grotesque claim linking the Bondi Beach killings to Australia's recognition of Palestinian statehood

It is extraordinary that Netanyahu’s grotesque claim linking the Bondi Beach killings to Australia's recognition of Palestinian statehood – that is, its respect for international law – is receiving such a sympathetic airing in the western media. Remember Netanyahu is not a disinterested party, though you would never know it from the coverage. In the immediate wake of the Sydney attack, two major US publications, the New York Times and the Atlantic, hurried to publish articles echoing Netanyahu by suggesting a linkage between the cause of Palestinian justice and anti-Jewish terror. The BBC, the Guardian and others have been platforming pro-Israel lobbyists also seeking to tie the anti-genocide protests of the past two years to the terror attack. International human rights groups, UN legal experts and genocide scholars are all agreed that Netanyahu has overseen a genocide in Gaza. He himself is wanted for crimes against humanity by the International Criminal Court, in part for using starvation as a weapon of war against the enclave’s population. But this suspected war criminal – a fugitive from justice – is being given a platform by every western news outlet to turn reality on its head and blame others for a supposed “crisis of antisemitism” he is centrally responsible for stoking. The criminal isn’t just being allowed to get away with his crimes. He is now the one being allowed to tell us who must be put on trial. Notice, too, the response from western leaders. See how quick they are to condemn an antisemitic terror attack, and how loudly – compared to how reluctant they have been for two years to even admit that the slaughter of tens of thousands of Palestinians and the starvation of two million more has even taken place. This looks, once again, like deep-seated western racism towards Palestinians, Arabs and Muslims, more than it does a problem of antisemitism in the West, as Netanyahu claims. It in no way justifies the Bondi Beach attack to refuse to accept Netanyahu’s flawed logic, and to search for the real causes of such violence. Misdiagnosing those causes, as Netanyahu prefers, means the wounds that led to the violence will continue to fester. There is every reason, as we shall see, to believe that this is exactly what the Israeli prime minister wants. This is an extract from my latest article Bondi Beach attack: How western allies are enabling Netanyahu's grotesque logic. Read the rest in the reply post