Cynicism after Horror (JPost Dec17)

Sebastian Levi criticizes Netanyahu for blaming the Australian government for the Bondi massacre, yet he himself admits that the Australian authorities were remiss after all the warnings from local Jewish leaders and even the Mossad, yet had failed to take meaningful steps to suppress violent threats, or to investigate suspicious actors, especially those with Arab or Muslim connections. His reasoning is that Netanyahu himself has never accepted responsibility for his failure to anticipate the Oct 7 massacre launched by Hamas. The logic is false; Netanyahu’s failure to question the pre-Oct 7 conception has nothing to do with Australia’s failure to protect Jewish Australians. One wonders what Levi would have written if Netanyahu had failed speak up about the Bondi massacre! Damned if you do, damned if you don’t!  He continues to criticize Netanyahu for claiming, rightly, that unconditionally recognizing a non-existent, non-functional Palestinian state encourages terrorism. It obviously does because Israelis and Hamas as well as Iran and other terrorists see it as a reward for the Oct7 massacre. When you reward evil, you get more evil; that shouldn’t be difficult to understand. Levi then claims, incorrectly that opposition to unconditional recognition of a Palestinian state is only Netanyahu’s policy; it’s Israel’s policy, supported by the vast majority of Israelis, for the obvious reason that a Palestinian state would be a terrorist state and an existential threat to Israel. Furthermore, Levi claims incorrectly, that Netanyahu is advancing the argument that all criticism of Israeli policy is anti-Semitic. This is nonsense; Netanyahu is referring only to specific disgraceful lack of action by the Australian government. According to Levi’s tortuous logic, criticism of Australia’s government and some of its policies is criticism of the entire Australian population. I see no evidence of this. The action of an Australian Arab bystander who risked his own life to disarm one of the terrorists has received wide acclaim; no one is blaming the Australian people for the disaster, just the government