The Online Hate Prevention Institute expresses our deepest condolences to the families of the victims of the Bondi Beach Chanukah massacre. We pray for the lives of those who were injured and remain in a serious condition. Our thoughts are also with those who were injured and those who have been traumatised by this deadly attack.

This page shares what we are doing and how you can help.

• This page is not public, please do not share it in public or in large groups on social media.
• You may share this page in private messages with individuals or small groups you are close to.

Response to the massacre

OHPI’s CEO is in Israel, participating in meetings of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance as an expert member of the Australian Government’s delegation. While the meetings are not public, a significant part of the discussions has reflect on the events in Australia. Our preliminary data on the online response to the attack was presented in IHRA’s Committee on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial. A more detailed preliminary report into the data was published on December 17th.

OHPI began monitoring social media and gathering data related to the attack within 15 minutes of it occurring.

In the first 36 hours we gathered 160 examples of hate. Many were claims denying the attack was real, calling it a false flag and blaming Jews or Israel for “staging” it. We continue to gather more examples. Here’s three examples from our collection:

We found this antisemitic disinformation spreading across Facebook, Reddit, Instagram, TikTok, X, YouTube and LinkedIn.

This is very similar to what we documented in our report after synagogues were fire bombed in Melbourne.

We will be developing a report over the coming days.

Our CEO, Dr Andre Oboler, wrote an op-ed “Out of the antisemitic terror attack at Bondi Beach, Australia must find a new resolve” published at the ABC’s Religion and Ethics has been widely read and shared. It calls for a reset.

“Australia has become a country where excuses are made rather than action taken. Instead of confronting hate and calling it out, we give it a wide berth so as to avoid confrontation. That approach, as many have warned, leads to the kind of bloodshed we’ve just witnessed at Bondi Beach…. we need to see change. We need to stop ceding ground to antisemitism. We, all decent Australians, need to speak up. We need greater public awareness and understanding of antisemitism. Most importantly, we need to stop excusing it and allowing it to fester and grow.”

Dr Oboler also provided commentary for a major article by Canaan Lidor in JSN. Here’s a couple of extracts:

Andre Oboler, an expert member of Australia’s delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, told JNS of “a lack of courage, allowing manifestations of hate to grow, rather than risk an escalation by confronting it. Slowly more and more space has been ceded to those promoting hate,” he said.

…

“When pro-Palestinian protests in both Sydney and Melbourne included antisemitic signs and chants, many marched with them, dismissing the presence of antisemitism as unimportant, and insufficient reason to distance themselves from those events,” Oboler, who’s also CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute and an adjunct associate professor at the La Trobe Law School, said, “We have even seen elected leaders marching with them, ignoring the concerns of the Jewish community over the signal that sends.”

Dr Oboler provided commentary for an additional article “Australian Jews call gun laws a deflection after Sydney massacre” in JSN rejecting the call for gun reform as the key response to this attack. Here’s a couple of extracts:

Extracts:

Andre Oboler, an expert member of Australia’s delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, told JNS that the current focus on gun control “entirely misses the point” as it “may reduce the risk of a random attack, but the Chanukah massacre was not a random attack. It was targeted. It was driven by an ideology of hate.”

Australia, Oboler said, will “only get back on track and return to the country we knew when the hate we are seeing, antisemitism, is named, recognized, and addressed.” Efforts to “avoid confrontation,” he added, “have left Australian Jews with their backs to the wall. That is the issue and only by addressing it can Australia return to what it once was.”

In a LinkedIn post Dr Oboler reflected on what is going wrong in Australia, here’s an extract:

Here is some of what I have observed in the last two years. A slow and sustained boiling of antisemitism in our streets. Increasing radicalization among some small but extremely vocal segments of society. The capture of government institutions, undermining their mission and destroying trust. Increasing demands that public policy and laws ignore the research and data and actively compromise the safety of some citizens. The false equivalence and linkage between Antisemitism and Islamophobia – both must of course be addressed, but on their own terms and when there is need to address that problem. The political expediency of trying to treat both problem exactly the same, of funding responses to both exactly the same, of not acting to address one unless the same action can be done for the other… it’s absolute insanity.

How can I help?

Our team of 9 staff, supplemented by additional volunteers we have trained to enable extra support in just such a crisis, are hard at work. What we don’t have are the funds to support this work. If we keep going without securing additional fund, we will be forced to close. If we stop working at a time like this, what’s the point of remaining open?

You can help us most by making a donation via our website. Donations over $2 made in Australia are tax deductible. Our online system will provide you an immediate receipt.

You can also help directing others to this page, but in private please.

What else are you working on?

In addition to supporting the immediate work and the new report on the Chanukah Massacre, your support will help with:

• Our work supporting real change to build a safer internet – see our introduction deck
• A new project tackling racism anti-Zionism, starting at the start of 2026 in partnership with the Online Hate Task Force and other partners (more below)
• Our vital monitoring of antisemitism across 10 social media platforms (more below)

Racist Anti-Zionism after the Chanukah massacre

We discussed racist anti-racism in our reports:

• Social Media and the Normalisation of Hate: October 7 Two Years On (October, 2025)
• Online Antisemitism After October 7 (March 2024)

An example of racist anti-Zionism hours after the Chanukah massacre:

Dr Oboler discuss this example in the op-ed at the ABC and tried to explain what was wrong with this to the poster, only to get this reply:

A major project focused on gathering data about Racist Anti-Zionism across a wide range of social media platforms has been in the planning stages for a number of months. We will be undertaking the project in partnership with European based the Online Hate Task Force and other partners.

Our monitoring of antisemitism

OHPI has been systematically collecting data across 10 social media platforms since October 2022, a year before October 7. Our data shows how antisemitism has grow on each of the platforms as well as the nature of the antisemitic narratives. This monitoring as lead to the capture of over 14,000 items of antisemitism. It includes over 800 items on each of the 10 platforms.

Every item has been:

• Reported to the platform it was hosted on
• Document by our staff
• Categorised according to the 27 categories of antisemitism based on the IHRA Working Definition of Antisemitism
• Archived so a copy is kept even after the material is removed

Due to a shortage of funding we were forced to suspend our monitoring at the end of November. Concerned at the risk this would pose, we quietly began monitoring again a week ago, despite the fact we have no funding to support this. This significantly increase the risk the organization will collapse is funding isn’t found to cover these costs. Below is the latest data up to the end of November.

The level of antisemitism

The Level of Online Antisemitism by Platform graph shows that as the ceasefire has taken hold, the level of antisemitism has started to dropped on almost every platform. Despite the drop, we remain at very elevated levels compared to before October 7, 2023 (shown in dark blue to the left of each set of graphs).

The nature of antisemitism

Our Type of Antisemitism graph shows that traditional antisemitism remains the most dominant form of antisemitism, followed by Israel related antisemitism which occurs about half as frequently. The drop in antisemitism overall is reflected in a drop across all categories, but the Israeli related category has changed the least.

The narratives of antisemitism

Each type of antisemitism is made up of multiple specific categories. To provide a more detailed look, we can examine these narratives as they appear on a specific platform. Some narratives occur much more frequently on one platform than on another. Note that as multiple narratives can appear in a single post, it is possible for the percentages to add up to more than 100%. Here are the narratives:

The Specific Antisemitism Narratives on X (Twitter) graph shows that in November there was a dominance of category 3.6 which is “Promoting traditional antisemitism such as blood libel and claims Jews killed Jesus” which appears in 44% of the antisemitism on X. Also included in this category are racial slurs (e.g. Kike), demonization (Jews are the devil), well poisoning, etc. It does not include conspiracy theories of Jewish power (such as those in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion) as they are separately listed in other 3.x categories.

The Specific Antisemitism Narratives on TikTok graphs again shows that in November category 3.6 as very common, but this time it is matched by category 4.4, each of them appearing in 20% of all content on TikTok. Category 4.4 is content which describes Israel, Israelis, or Zionists using any of the antisemitic words or imagery that would normally be covered by a “3.x” category if it was instead explicitly about Jews. This includes not only category 3.6 described above, but also the various conspiracy theories. 4.4 includes claims that “Zionists control the government”, the banks, the media, etc. There is a rise in category 4.4 on TikTok over recent months. Category 3.6 dropped in August, rose in September and October, then dropped again in November.

Unlike the previous two platforms, on LinkedIn in November category 4.4 remained the highest at 34%, followed by category 3.6 at 25%. This reflects they way some people use LinkedIn engage in advocacy targeting professional networks, and either fail to recognise when their content about Israel, Israelis, or Zionists crosses into the use of traditional antisemitic tropes, or feel it is acceptable to do this.

As an example of a far-right platform we can see the graph for Gab which shows the in November 64% of the antisemitism was in category 3.6. It also shows that 24% was in category 3.2 which is “Promoting the idea of a world Jewish conspiracy”. While it is only at 6% of the content in November, category 2.3 “Calling for harm to Jewish people in general” has been steadily growing back towards the 11% it was at before October 7. This is something to watch. As expected, the far right has far less engagement with Israel related antisemitism, though category 4.4 still gets some attention as traditional antisemitism is expressed in terms of Israel, Israelis, or Zionists, but it is far less common than on the other platforms (under 7%) and the other 4.x categories are almost completely absent.