the brilliantly leaping gazelle

The thing that to me is the most shocking thing about the mass shooting at Bondi Beach that killed 16 people, injured many more and traumatised countless others, was that anyone considered it shocking. The other shocking thing was that something on this scale hadn’t happened before. It was entirely inevitable, How could it not have been?

Of course ultimate responsibility for the deaths rests with the gunmen. They pulled the triggers. But when one pulls the focus back from the immediate, and considers all the factors that led to the immediate happening, then one can only conclude that there are all manner of causative factors. Some less causative than others, some participated in by people with less hatred in their hearts than others and some actions less likely to result in a mass shooting than others, granted.

But all sharing some of the blame for creating the mindset necessary to create the conditions whereby a father and his son thought it a perfectly reasonable thing to murder a bunch of strangers.

A mindset that has infected so many people, in so many ways and in so many supposedly impartial organisations precisely because it wasn’t seen as a mindset at all. Rather, it seemed to have been arrived independently by all, and not as part of a long planned and gradually increasing strategy. One that calculated – worryingly correct as it turned out – that emotion, intellectual vanity and groupthink mattered more than fact, evidence or consistency.

The protest marches in in London, other cities in the UK and around the world, attended by the kinds of useful idiots who saw no contradiction whatsoever in accusing Israel of committing genocide and chanting ‘From the river to the sea/ Palestine will be free.” The travesty of Turkey actively supporting South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), when Turkey committed genocide against the Armenian people in 1916. The fact that the case was even heard by the ICJ in the fist place was all kinds of wrong not least because Ireland joined in by petitioning for a broader interpretation of the meaning of genocide to be used by the ICJ. Which in essence was anything Israel did.

No matter that every country on earth would retaliate after a massacre of over 1200 of its citizens. Or indeed that the populations of those countries would demand it. Who would ignore calls for restraint, asking instead what restraint was shown to the 1200 dead? Imagine America’s reaction if 42,000 Americans had been killed simply for being Americans in America? That’s the same proportion. Or Turkey if over 10,000 of their own people had been murdered? How long do I think that Irelands grandstanding on the worlds stage would last if over 400 of its people had been taken hostage? I’d better check with a leprechaun.

The fact that numbers of murdered and kidnapped were not presented in these terms is itself indicative of the mindset existing. Of both how universal it has become and tacitly endorsed by by the media it is. How by not critically evaluating any ‘news’ coming out of Gaza, ‘new’s’ that was ruthlessly controlled by Hamas, the global media were effectively amplifying propaganda.

This then lead to all manner of political charlatans seeing an opportunity and exploiting it for their own ends. We saw the results of it after the 2024 general election, when newly elected 5 MP’s and Corblimey formed ‘Independent Alliance’, which with Raisin became ‘Jaw-jaw Party’ and which ultimately ended in independence from each other. The UK and five other governments recognised Palestine as a being in a right state was an attempt was appeasement by another name; effectively a reward for murder, rape, kidnapping and torture.

We were told that assault and criminal damage sometimes had a moral justification, if the assaults and criminal damage were carried out by members of Palestine Action (PA) against a UK based Israeli defence firm. And that when these PA activists were remanded in custody, imagined that going on a hunger strike would demonstrate the sincerity of their beliefs. It did that alright. I’ve just finished watching “Say Nothing’ and Dolours Price, one of the main characters was an actual IRA terrorist, who after her conviction for bombing the Old Bailey in 1973, went on an actual hunger strike that lasted 208 days. ( She was force fed to prevent her from dying in prison.)

However the same mindset that allows people to shout ‘globalise the intifada’ or ‘from the river to the sea’ as part of performative protests on the streets of London, Bristol and Glasgow, also allows people to actually globalise the intifada on the beach at Bondi. And, as we learned earlier last week, to plan for what would’ve been the worst terrorist attack in British history.

Two men – I use that word in a biological sense only – were found guilty at Preston Crown Court of preparing acts of terrorism, with their main targets being the Jewish community in the north-west of England, members of law enforcement and the military. They bought assault rifles, handguns and over a thousand rounds of rounds of ammunition in preparation for a marauding suicide gun attack. One of them scouted out synagogues, Jewish schools and a Kosher supermarket. He also considered carrying out an attack during protests against anti-Semitism. They also planned on having friends to make hoax calls to emergency services to divert resources and create even more chaos.

This was going to happen in the Britain of 2025, but the Britain of 2025 was a Britain where feelings trumped fact. Where the manipulation by the media isn’t quite so naked. One where political opportunism, performative virtue signalling and an inverted morality have now convinced some people that some ends justify some means.

The Britain of 2026 is going to be one of when’s and not ifs.