Australian author Richard Flanagan talks at the literature festival at the Louisiana Museum of Modern Art in Humlebaek, Denmark, Aug. 22, 2025. Photo: REUTERS/Tom Little

Award-winning Australian novelist Richard Flanagan claimed at a festival in Sydney recently that the deadly ISIS-inspired terrorist attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach last year was not antisemitic and that the “Israel lobby” could be fueling antisemitism in the country.

“Other than the murderous evil of the two gunmen, where was the antisemitism to be found at Bondi on that terrible day? Nowhere. Nowhere. Nowhere,” Flanagan said while presenting a new essay inspired by his book Heresies at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas. He then condemned “the immediate politicization of the massacre by the Israel lobby.” Saying the terrorist attack was a result of Australian antisemitism is a “destructive myth built around the Bondi massacre,” he alleged.

Flanagan, who is the first and only author to have ever won both the Booker and the Baillie Gifford coveted literary awards, read from a new essay that focused primarily on Israel, Zionism, and antisemitism. He claimed the Bondi terrorist attack against Jewish Australians showcased multiculturalism in the country because Australians from “every creed, color, and background” rushed to the scene to help, and that “far from being a culmination of a wave of national antisemitism, [the attack] was a refutation of antisemitism.”

“Freedom of speech and expression are now endangered in Australia by the politicization and weaponization of the Bondi massacre,” the author said. He also made allegations about the “renewed attempt by the Israel lobby to use that tragedy to silence discussion around Israel and Gaza, accusing Israel of “seeking to silence” Australians with the “slur” of antisemitism.

“This massacre [at Bondi Beach], it was argued, was a consequence of a government that had done nothing and ignored all warnings about antisemitism … To what extend has the Israel lobby itself contributed to antisemitism in Australia by consistently advocating for Israel’s war in Gaza in a highly aggressive fashion, always seeking to identify all Australian Jewish people with Israel’s actions and with the lobby’s own heavy-handed attempts to silence Australians,” he stated. “Could it be the lobby’s own acts fueling antisemitism?”

”But if you wish to create a machine to destroy social cohesion in this country, a machine to create hatred of Jews such as this country has never known, then endorse the ambitions of the special envoy for antisemitism,” Flanagan added. “Because although this will be the work of the Israel lobby on behalf of Israel, it will be Australian Jews who will be blamed and scapegoated for it.”

Flanagan further claimed that incidents categorized as antisemitic in Australia after the deadly Hamas-led terrorist attack in southern Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, were in fact “legitimate acts of protest by Australians about the horror of the emerging genocide in Gaza,” including the pro-Palestinian march across the Sydney Harbour Bridge in 2025, where some attendees waved flags in support of the designed terrorist organizations Al Qaeda and ISIS.

Despite Flanagan’s comments, Australia has seen a historic surge in antisemitic incidents in the wake of the Oct. 7 attack, according to the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. Meanwhile, Australian intelligence has warned the threat of antisemitism across the country has escalated from harassment and intimidation to physical attacks.

Flanagan’s speech was overflowing with anti-Israel and anti-Zionist rhetoric and conspiracy theories. He accused Israel and the “Israel lobby” of “threatening to pervert” democracy in Australia and control the country, and claimed Israel is “seeking to silence us here in Australia” when it comes to discussions about the Jewish state. “From public broadcasting, to libraries, schools, university, to sports, to medicine, grotesque demands to control every aspect of Australian public life,” he stated.

The author further claimed that Australia as a whole cannot stand up against the “Israel lobby” because Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government has the “spine of a licorice stick.”

He additionally criticized the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism — claiming that it “conflates criticism of Israel and criticism of Zionism with antisemitism” — and repeatedly compared Zionism with Nazism. He said at one point that Zionism “arose out of the same ethno-nationalist ferment of the late 19th and early 20th century Europe that also gave the world Nazism, fascism, extreme nationalism, and authoritarianism. Its model of society building was that of 19th century imperialism, conquest and violence to create ethnically pure countries.”