"Repetition does not transform a lie into a truth"
Franklin D. Roosevelt
The antisemitic terrorist attack targeting Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach in Sydney had barely unfolded before it was hijacked online
Within hours, a sprawling ecosystem of conspiracy theories metastasized across social platforms, pushed by far-left activists, Islamist and jihadi propagandists, and far-right influencers alike. Their political differences collapsed into a single, familiar pattern: blaming Jews - reframed as “Israel,” “Zionists,” or the Mossad - for their own murder.
A mass-casualty attack against a Jewish community gathering was instantly denied, inverted, or reframed as a hoax, a “false flag,” or a justified act — often all three at once. Jews were cast not as victims of terrorism, but as its secret authors and beneficiaries.
As Conspiracy Watch’s Tristan Mendès France reported, the volume of viral posts pushing conspiracy theories about the #BondiBeach massacre was staggering. Within hours, highly viewed tweets asserted that Israel had advance knowledge of the attack, that the perpetrators were linked to Israeli intelligence, or that the event had been staged entirely.
Two posts alone, each attracting millions of views, alleged that one of the attackers’ names had been searched on Google in Tel Aviv the day before the massacre — an entirely fabricated claim presented as forensic “proof.”
Ahmed Hassan insinuated Israeli foreknowledge. Hassan Mafi went further, posting bluntly:
“Zionists are known for faking attacks on themselves.”
This is a classic antisemitic trope: Jews engineering violence against themselves to manipulate public opinion. It requires no evidence — only the presumption of Jewish duplicity.
The same claim was amplified by The Patriotic Blonde (@ImBreckWorsham), a pro-MAGA account with a long record of Jew-baiting content:
“Okay, @FBI. Please explain why alleged Bondi Beach shooter Naveed Akram was googled in Tel Aviv on December 13, 1 day before the shooting. I’ll wait.”
No evidence was offered. None exists. But the insinuation — Israeli omniscience, Jewish orchestration — was instantly legible to conspiracist audiences primed to see Jews as a shadowy global network.
Among the most aggressive purveyors of denial was Sulaiman Ahmed (@ShaykhSulaiman), a virulently antisemitic conspiracy merchant previously profiled by Conspiracy Watch. Ahmed quickly framed the massacre as a staged operation, explicitly invoking Candace Owens.
“CANDACE OWENS SAID THERE WOULD BE A 9/11 STYLE FALSE FLAG IN SECOND WEEK OF DECEMBER.”
The message was clear: Jews had engineered the attack in advance.
Across platforms, the pattern repeated: deny terrorist violence, redirect blame toward Jews, then reinterpret Jewish grief as manipulation.
Others went straight to an even older template, immediately branding the massacre an “inside job” carried out by the Mossad - “just like 9/11.” Alongside this rhetoric came a newer accelerant: AI-assisted visual manipulation. Several accounts circulated side-by-side image comparisons from the crime scene, claiming they proved the attack was staged or “doctored.” One such post amassed more than 5,000 likes, despite obvious inconsistencies visible when the original images were traced.
This tactic is a digital update of a well-known conspiracist reflex. Similar claims proliferated after major mass-casualty attacks — from Sandy Hook to Nice — and resurfaced recently after the murder of Charlie Kirk, where denialist accounts likewise invoked a “shadowy Israeli plot.” The underlying narrative is the same: the myth of “crisis actors.”
As documented by Conspiracy Watch, the term — born in American conspiracist subcultures — alleges that victims, witnesses, relatives, or experts are paid performers used to stage massacres or terrorist attacks. It has been deployed to deny school shootings (Aurora, Newtown), terrorist attacks (Boston Marathon, Nice), ISIS executions, and even Russian war crimes in Bucha. Such accusations routinely trigger harassment campaigns against survivors and families, deepen polarisation, and slide toward outright negationism.
At Bondi Beach, this familiar denialism was simply upgraded with AI tools: old antisemitic myths repackaged as “forensic” scepticism.
One of the most egregious interventions came from Fayed Abushammalah, a former BBC Gaza bureau correspondent, who published a rant claiming the Sydney massacre bore “Zionist Mossad fingerprints.”
According to this narrative, the timing and imagery of the attack were allegedly designed to serve Benjamin Netanyahu ahead of a US visit, allowing Israel to “flood” the media with images portraying Jews as victims — a grotesque inversion of reality.
The former correspondent argued that because pro-Israel accounts described the attackers as jihadists early on, the event itself should be treated as suspicious — as if naming Islamist terrorism were evidence of Israeli manipulation.
He later shared an entirely fabricated claim that one of the attackers was an IDF soldier who had served in Gaza — a lie that circulated widely before being debunked.
Notorious conspiracist Max Blumenthal also moved rapidly to recast the massacre as an Israeli operation. A long-time pro-Iran influencer and serial promoter of “false flag” narratives, Blumenthal was actively amplified by ADAM (@AdameMedia), which asserted that Israel had been staging “constant antisemitic false flags in Australia.”
Blumenthal highlighted a string of unrelated incidents, falsely describing them as actions carried out by “paid actors.” He cited an isolated case in which an Israeli teenager had previously phoned in anonymous threats to Jewish institutions — weaponising the episode to imply a coordinated Israeli plot.
From this distorted assemblage, Blumenthal and his amplifiers concluded that responsibility was now being “pinned on Iran,” completing a familiar conspiracist inversion: antisemitic violence against Jews recast as Jewish deception, and Islamist terror reframed as Israeli propaganda.
Other conspiracists attempted to “prove” Israeli involvement by pointing to supposed time-zone discrepancies, claiming one of the attackers must have been operating from Tel Aviv. These arguments ignored a basic fact: Australia is many hours ahead of Israel and Europe. The omission was not accidental; it was functional.
Meanwhile, the murdered rabbi became a posthumous target. Photos of him were circulated with captions suggesting he “deserved” his fate or that he was secretly Mossad. Some claimed he had posed with Israeli soldiers; others alleged the shooter himself was IDF.
This was not merely denial. It was moral inversion: victims transformed into perpetrators, and mass murder reframed as either staged or justified.
Reporting by Iran International showed how Iranian state-aligned figures and outlets rapidly echoed similar narratives — even as Iran’s foreign ministry issued a formal condemnation.
Hours before the attack, Ahmad Ghadiri Abyaneh, son of Iran’s former ambassador to Australia and a supporter of Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, posted an antisemitic message describing Hanukkah celebrations as a “platform for satanic rituals of Masonic circles” and calling for “spiritual defense.”
After the massacre, Iranian outlets escalated. Tasnim News, linked to the Revolutionary Guards, ran a headline stating: “At Least 10 Zionists Slain in Hanukkah Festival in Australia.” Sabereen News praised the killing of a British-born rabbi. Fars News framed the event as a “murky story,” while Mehr News explicitly accused the “Zionist regime” of responsibility.
Senior IRGC general Mohammad Reza Naghdi publicly declared Israel the “sole beneficiary” of the massacre, arguing that the killing of Jews would somehow serve Israeli political goals — a claim that collapses under the weight of its own cynicism.
The convergence did not stop there. Buckley Carlson, brother of Tucker Carlson, promoted “Australia truther” conspiracies suggesting the massacre was staged by “Zionist networks and intelligence,” mocking Jewish victims, and notably Arsen Ostrovksy, and accusing them of exploiting the attack to push antisemitism laws.
Across ideological lines — far left, Islamist, and far right — the message converged: Jews lie, Jews manipulate, Jews profit; therefore Jews cannot be victims.
What followed the Bondi Beach attack was not spontaneous misinformation. It was the activation of a well-rehearsed antisemitic repertoire: false flags, Mossad omnipotence, crisis actors, AI-assisted denial, and moral reversal.
The platforms differed. The accents differed. The politics differed.
The hatred did not.
For sixteen years, Conspiracy Watch has been diligently spreading awareness about the perils of conspiracy theories through real-time monitoring and insightful analyses. To keep our mission alive, we rely on the critical support of our readers.
