Following the Dec. 14 ISIS-inspired Bondi Beach massacre of 15 participants at a Chanukah celebration, including a 10-year-old girl, multiple senior citizens, a Holocaust survivor, and two rabbis, a Time Magazine essay found excuses to blame everyone but the Jew haters for growing antisemitism.
In “What the Bondi Beach Attack Reveals About Antisemitism in Australia,” editor at large Charlie Campbell posed the “burning question” of “whether American support for Israel’s offensive in Gaza, and Canberra’s close alliance with the U.S., was putting Australian Jews in danger” (Dec. 16).
The moral inversion is appalling. Campbell’s cynical question pins responsibility for antisemitic terrorism neither on terrorists nor on antisemites, but rather on Australia, America, and, ultimately, Israel. According to Campbell, support for Israel was the primary cause of the antisemitism that led to their murders.
A better question is why TIME wants you to think this is “the burning question.”
One could just as easily deflect responsibility for pogroms, Nazi atrocities, expulsions.
“Just asking burning questions,” to borrow a meme. Utterly shameful by TIME. https://t.co/cbZnGWUhYf
— Gilead Ini (@GileadIni) December 17, 2025
But Campbell wasn’t done.
Later in the same article he quoted a criminologist to claim that “marginalized people” are in a “pressure cooker of isolation, disaffection, and resentment,” because they feel “denied being able to voice concerns or perspectives.” In other words, the real victims of antisemitism are not Jews, but those who feel uncomfortable when antisemitism is combatted.
The article even failed to acknowledge the obvious. Campbell suggested “the true motivation for the violence” is still being “discerned.”
His piece also distorted the record. While Campbell acknowledged an “almost five-fold rise in firebombing, arson, graffiti, and hate speech incidents, he connects it not to Hamas’ Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, but rather to “Israel’s military response” since Oct. 7, 2023.
Recall that just two days after the attack — well before Israel forces began to respond to it in earnest — pro-Hamas activists were already shouting “F**k the Jews” and “Where’s the Jews?” outside the Sydney Opera House. That’s not a protest of “Israel’s military response.” It’s naked antisemitism, inspired by Hamas’ slaughter.
At every step, Campbell exploited the Time brand and platform to shift responsibility from antisemites and terrorists to Jews and their supporters.
Sadly, Time is not alone in promoting this flawed narrative of blaming Jews for their own murders.
In the wake of Sunday’s massacre, British media personality Piers Morgan said to Israel’s Deputy Foreign Minister Sharren Haskel, “Many people feel that that the lives of Jews around the world have been made less safe by the actions of the Israeli government…”
On X, John Spencer, the chief of Urban Warfare Studies at West Point, rebuked Morgan for his “[s]elective and twisted facts about Gaza,” and also for implying that government actions in war justify targeting not only citizens but of that country but also anyone of the same ethnicity or religion a target.
Horrific disgusting logic pushed by @piersmorgan Selective and twisted facts about Gaza as usual, but the logic or idea that actions by a government or military in war makes not ONLY its citizens but even anyone of the same ethnicity, religion a target. So any Russian, British,… https://t.co/6zsCqT4Vql
— John Spencer (@SpencerGuard) December 17, 2025
Instead of blaming the perpetrators for their hate-driven violence, both Campbell and Morgan excused the terrorists and blame the victims. Would they apply the same logic to any other ethnic group?