Category: Australia
Dem House Candidate Offers Condolences to Australia’s Jewish Community—Only To Delete the Statement and Replace It With a Message That Omits Jews
A House of Representatives candidate in Pennsylvania posted a heartfelt message on X about the shooting at Brown University and attack at a Hanukkah festival in Sydney, Australia, before deleting the post and replacing it with one that only mentioned Brown.
The post Dem House Candidate Offers Condolences to Australia’s Jewish Community—Only To Delete the Statement and Replace It With a Message That Omits Jews appeared first on .
Pakistani national suspected in terror attack on Jewish gathering in Australia on first night of Hanukkah; over a dozen dead
A Pakistani national is suspected in what one police official called a “terrorist incident” against a Jewish gathering at an Australian beach on the first night of Hanukkah in which at least 15 were killed Sunday, including a 12-year-old.
Another 40 people were hospitalized with injuries, including two officers and three children, after the attack at Bondi Beach, CBS News reported.
‘What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of anti-Semitism, an act of terrorism on our shores in an iconic Australian location, Bondi Beach, that is associated with joy, associated with families gathering, associated with celebrations, and it is forever tarnished by what has occurred last evening.’
On Monday morning local time, police said two gunmen — a 50-year-old father and his 24-year-old son — opened fire while the local Jewish community was celebrating the first night of Hanukkah, the network news outlet said.
The 50-year-old gunman died, and his son was hospitalized in “serious condition,” New South Wales Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon said, according to CBS News.
More from the network news outlet:
The 24-year-old was identified as Naveed Akram, a Pakistani national based in Sydney, according to a U.S. intelligence briefing and a driver’s license provided by Australian police. Police previously said the deceased gunman was the son, but Lanyon later clarified that the father was shot and killed by police.
New South Wales Health Minister Ryan Park said the death toll had risen from 12 to 16 overnight, including a 12-year-old child. Three other children are being treated in the hospital, he said.
“This is absolutely horrendous for the community broadly, but particularly the Jewish community. … What we saw last night was the worst of humanity, but at the same time, the very best of humanity,” Park told CBS News, which added that it is unclear if the number of fatalities or injuries included the gunmen.
The international organization Chabad, which represents a branch of ultra-Orthodox Judaism, said one of its rabbis — Rabbi Eli Schlanger — was among the dead, the network news outlet said, citing the Associated Press.
More from CBS News:
Called Hanukkah by the Sea, the event was held to mark the beginning of the Jewish holiday observed from sundown on Sunday until Monday, Dec. 22. More than 1,000 were at the beach when gunfire broke out, said Lanyon. He called the attack a “terrorist incident” and said the perpetrators used “long arms,” referring to long guns such as shotguns or rifles, to carry it out.
New South Wales Premier Chris Minns and Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese also characterized the attack as targeted, with Minns saying it “was designed to target Sydney’s Jewish community.” The prime minister said it was “a targeted attack on Jewish Australians.”
“What we saw yesterday was an act of pure evil, an act of anti-Semitism, an act of terrorism on our shores in an iconic Australian location, Bondi Beach, that is associated with joy, associated with families gathering, associated with celebrations, and it is forever tarnished by what has occurred last evening,” Albanese said during a news conference Monday morning local time, the network news outlet noted.
Lanyon added to CBS News that police believed several improvised explosive devices were inside a vehicle at Campbell Parade — a main street that runs parallel to Bondi Beach — which officials discovered shortly after the shooting occurred; a rescue bomb disposal crew was at the scene.
U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a social media post said “the United States strongly condemns the terrorist attack in Australia targeting a Jewish celebration. Antisemitism has no place in this world. Our prayers are with the victims of this horrific attack, the Jewish community, and the people of Australia,” the network news outlet reported.
More from CBS News:
One video appeared to show someone wrestling with one of the suspected gunmen and taking his weapon from him, according to Minns, who paid tribute to that individual in some of his comments Sunday.
The video was recorded by a bystander along Campbell Parade, a main street that runs parallel to Bondi Beach. In it, a man jumped up from a crouched position behind a parked car and tackled the suspect, who had just fired his weapon toward something out of view.
Following a short struggle, the man disarmed the suspect, pushed him to the ground, and turned the weapon on him, at which point the suspect stood up and walked in the opposite direction. The man then lowered the weapon and raised his free hand in the air. Off to the side, one person appeared to be lying unresponsive on the sidewalk beside a different vehicle.
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Minns called the man — whom relatives named Ahmed al Ahmed, a fruit shop owner, to Australian media — a “genuine hero,” the network news outlet said.
More from CBS News:
Mass shootings in Australia are rare. But researchers have recorded dramatic upticks in antisemitic incidents in the country since the Oct. 7, 2023, assault by Hamas terrorists on Israel triggered the war in Gaza, along with spikes in hate incidents against Muslim groups.
In response, the Australian government appointed special envoys last year to address antisemitism and Islamophobia in its communities. However, attacks have continued to happen since then. In July, an arsonist set fire to the door of a synagogue in Melbourne, another major Australian city, seven months after a different synagogue in the same city was burned by criminals in a blaze that injured one worshipper.
This is a developing story; updates may be added.
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Kids have already found a way around Australia’s new social media ban: Making faces
The liberal-dominated Australian parliament passed an amendment to its online safety legislation last year, imposing age restrictions for certain social media platforms.
As of Dec. 10, minors in the former penal colony are prohibited from using various platforms, including Facebook, Reddit, Snapchat, TikTok, X, and YouTube — platforms that face potential fines exceeding $32 million should they fail to prevent kids from creating new accounts or from maintaining old accounts.
Australian kids were quick, however, to find a workaround: distorting their faces to appear older.
‘They know how important it is to give kids more time to just be kids.’
Numerous minors revealed to the Telegraph that within minutes of the ban going into effect, they were able to get past their country’s new age-verification technology by frowning at the camera.
Noah Jones, a 15-year-old boy from Sydney, indicated that he used his brother’s ID card to rejoin Instagram after the app flagged him as looking too young.
Jones, whose mother supported his rebellion and characterized the law as “poor legislation,” indicated that when Snapchat similarly prompted him to verify his age, “I just looked at [the camera], frowned a little bit, and it said I was over 16.”
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Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. Photo by DAVID GRAY / AFP via Getty Images.
Jones suggested to the Telegraph that some teens may alternatively seek out social media platforms the Australian government can’t regulate or touch.
“Where do you think everyone’s going to?” said Jones. “Straight to worse social media platforms — they’re less regulated, and they’re more dangerous.”
Zarla Macdonald, a 14-year-old in Queensland, reportedly contemplated joining one such less-regulated app, Coverstar. However, she has so far managed to stay on TikTok and Snapchat because the age-verification software mistakenly concluded she was 20.
“You have to show your face, turn it to the side, open your mouth, like just show movement in your face,” said Macdonald. “But it doesn’t really work.”
Besides fake IDs and frowning, some teens are apparently using stock images, makeup, masks, and fake mustaches to fool the age-verification tech. Others are alternatively using VPNs and their parents’ accounts to get on social media.
The social media ban went into effect months after a government-commissioned study determined on the basis of a nationally representative survey of 2,629 kids ages 10 to 15 that:
- 71% had encountered content online associated with harm;
- 52% had been cyberbullied;
- 25% had experienced online “hate”;
- 24% had experienced online sexual harassment;
- 23% had experienced non-consensual tracking, monitoring, or harassment;
- 14% had experienced online grooming-type behavior; and
- 8% experienced image-based abuse.
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said in a statement on Wednesday, “Parents, teachers, and students are backing in our social media ban for under-16s. Because they know how important it is to give kids more time to just be kids — without algorithms, endless feeds and online harm. This is about giving children a safer childhood and parents more peace of mind.”
The picture accompanying his statement featured a girl who in that moment expressed opposition to the ban.
The student in Albanese’s poorly chosen photo is hardly the only opponent to the law.
Reddit filed a lawsuit on Friday in Australia’s High Court seeking to overturn the ban. The U.S.-based company argued that the ban should be invalidated because it interfered with free political speech implied by Australia’s constitution, reported Reuters.
Australian Health Minister Mark Butler suggested Reddit was not suing to protect young Aussies’ right to political speech but rather to protect profits.
“It is action we saw time and time again by Big Tobacco against tobacco control, and we are seeing it now by some social media or Big Tech giant,” said Butler.
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