Social terrorists gleefully set off weapons of mass doxxing

Anti-Israel activists Elsa Tuet-Rosenberg, left, and Zee Mazloum in a social media post promoting the sale off offensive anti-Israel slogans on t-shirts. Picture: Instagram

I received a text last weekend from a friend that contained a phrase I have not been able to get out of my head. This friend is measured, intelligent, sensible and in all ways a fundamentally decent human. The message observed that a certain person in the public arena was a “social terrorist”.

Before I go on, I get that you now want to know who it was, but in truth that’s irrelevant. Also, I’ve no interest in adding my name to the long list of litigants playing defamation bingo. That being said, in Australia, truth is an absolute defence, so, tempting – but no.

Back to the idea of social terrorism. I haven’t heard such an accurate phrase coined in many a long month. Doesn’t it describe so perfectly the zeitgeist gripping so many of our peers, neighbours and leaders? I use the term leaders begrudgingly and oh so loosely in this context.

Terror, not inflicted with firearms, explosives or conventional weaponry but with language. With social media. With threats of financial harm. Ruined careers and reputations.

Sins of commission and omission, such as weak leadership and failure to confront the poison that has been seeping through our society since October 7. Oh, I believe it has always been there, in some form or another, but the attack on Israel and, if we are honest, on all of us, on Western values and culture, has lanced a festering boil of gigantic proportions.

Now, social terrorism is out of the shadows and for the past four months we have seen an unprecedented attack on Australian Jews. This wave of terror, which has caused businesses to shut down, families to flee their homes and suburbs, and Jews verbally harassed in the street, remains unchecked and out of control. It’s like wildfire.

How else to describe it when 600 people have their personal details shared publicly, simply for being Jewish? I mean, what does anyone think the intent of this doxxing was? So people could take their personal details, contact them and offer support? This is evil. This is a form of terrorism.

Did it all start with the onset of cancel culture or was social terrorism seeded in our midst before this?

History is always instructive, even if we are often shamefully blind and mute to its teachings.

This isn’t your run-of-the-mill racism and prejudice, dare I even describe it as such. The kind rooted in ignorance, rather than deep-seated, existential hatred. The kind of racism my father and hundreds of thousands of other new Australians were on the receiving end of when they arrived here. The kind First Nations people still battle with.

I recall my dad saying, Gemmy, first it was us and the Greeks. Then, the Vietnamese and the Chinese when they started coming here. My dad took it all in his stride, though some of the stories he shared invoked a rage within me. Bruno’s view was that you duke it out or sort it out over a beer. Often, one led to another. Those were different days, though. Less sinister. Less serious.

Social terrorism in Australia in 2024 is the weaponising of terms like genocide and colonisation by people who haven’t got a clue what they mean but say them anyway.

It’s the mobilisation of the worst of society, the least intelligent and empathetic, people who without thinking twice carry signs that say “Time to take out the trash” over a Star of David. It’s the use of the word Jew as a deliberate and derogatory term.

It’s not only Australian Jews on the receiving end, though they are undeniably the primary target right now. Anyone who holds a different view on an issue such as sex and gender. Asserting that a woman is, for example, an adult, human female. The attacks are co-ordinated, swift, menacing and designed to inflict maximum damage, personally and professionally. Comply with our view or suffer the consequences. Many have.

What I’m describing is like the outworkings of an abusive relationship. These people gaslight as if it were an Olympic sport, whipping out the equivalent of “I hit you because you made me angry”. No better example than those who say that rape and sexual brutalisation in the context of October 7 were justifiable resistance.

I have watched, over the past four months, people getting absolutely morally and intellectually contorted trying to make Israel the villain. I mean, it takes a special kind of moral bankruptcy and intellectual failing to arrive at the conclusion.

Every civilian death in Gaza is a tragedy and each one is on the head of Hamas and their civilian collaborators. You know, like the ones who kept women like Mia Schem hostage. Rationally, there is no other culpability.

Can I also remind you there’s a baby still being held hostage somewhere in Gaza. Not a child accidentally taken during the heat of battle. Not as a casualty of a terrible, awful conflict. But a little baby boy whose first birthday was marked as a hostage. Assuming he’s still alive. He was deliberately taken to inflict maximum trauma. Can I say it again, scream it again? They took a baby hostage on purpose. The elderly, on purpose. They raped and brutalised those women on purpose. Cut off their breasts, their heads, drove nails into their genitals. All of it on purpose because Hamas hates Israel, hates Western culture and values, and wants to wipe all of it from the face of the earth.

Social terrorists don’t care about that. Social terrorists have no capacity to debate complex matters, so they resort to weapons of warfare in the digital age.

They look at these crimes from the safety of distance and the lens of ignorance, and say: That black eye? You deserved it. They are fundamentally uninterested in a solution and don’t really want peace. Where in the history of the world has a terrorist group been motivated by a desire for peace?

Here in Australia, it’s an easy train to jump on because there’s no material price to pay for the ride. The Prime Minister says he will consider making doxxing illegal. Respectfully, that is an inadequate response. Talk is cheap, we all know that. The time for action is well passed.