The Sydney attack that targeted Jewish Australian citizens that everyone condemned, Arabs and non-Arabs, Eastern and Western alike, and was denounced even by the staunchest supporters of the Palestinian cause because it assaulted civilian citizens solely because of their Jewish faith, after a father and his son fell into the clutches of fanaticism and committed a repugnant terrorist act.
Certainly, the ISIS ideology, which one of the perpetrators had been interrogated over but eventually released due to a lack of evidence, has burdened not only on the Palestinian cause, but also on Arabs and Muslims more broadly. It is the pretext far-right forces in the West and in Israel use to paint Muslims with the brush of terrorism, presenting it as a structural problem rooted in their creed rather than an aberrant deviation rejected by the vast majority of Arabs and Muslims, who have suffered more than anyone else from its violence.
The truth is that the reaction of the occupying power to this operation was both pre-meditated and contradictory. On the one hand, the Israeli government has shown a desire to annihilate the people of Gaza, not only Hamas, on religious and ethnic grounds. It hates Palestinians, not those of them who bear arms.
Statements about annihilating Gaza’s population or dropping a nuclear bomb on them reflected an “existential” rejection of their very existence on this land merely because they are Arabs and Palestinians. This is essentially the ISIS worldview, which punishes its enemies with death, even if they are Muslims.
The Sydney attack was an opportunity for Israel to claim victimhood and highlight antisemitism - to argue that Jews are targeted by Arabs and Muslims because they are Jews, and that Israel is targeted by “Islamic terrorism” because it is a Jewish state, not because it is the last settler-colonial state in the world. In truth, however, the courageous and humane actions of a young Australian of Syrian origins, Ahmad Al-Ahmad, dealt a fatal blow to the Israeli narrative that constantly seeks opportunities to push suspicion and hostility of Arabs and Muslims worldwide, portraying them as “potential terrorists” and depicting Jews everywhere as victims of this terrorism.
The truth is also that the Israeli narrative, which proceeds from a notion of “cultural stigma” attached to Arabs, particularly the Palestinians, whose ideological and religious creed they claim encourage terrorism, went further, adopting a socio-political interpretation of this attack. It argued that the incident was also the result of Australia’s recognition of the Palestinian state, its tolerance of protests supporting the Palestinian cause, and its condemnation of Israeli crimes in Gaza, moves that it claims encouraged a climate of antisemitism.
In scholarship and in political choices, cultural interpretation and value judgments have proponents and champions on the far right, just as socio-political interpretations have proponents among progressive and liberal forces that reject blank judgments on nations, religions, or civilizations - be they Jewish, Muslim, or Christian. Introducing political and social considerations into conceptions of violent phenomena and terrorism is an effort to explain them, not to justify them. For example, it is untenable to argue that the existence of armed violent organizations in the Palestinian territories is due solely, or even primarily, to creed: that some individuals’ deeply puritanical religious views legitimize this violence in isolation from the political state of the occupied Palestinian territories, which drives them to take up arms and choose violent resistance.
It is true that Israel’s extremist government is prepared to fabricate ideas and political positions in order to entrench its misleading narrative. It consistently highlights the cultural narrative that Palestinians - not only Hamas - are “terrorists,” and that it is fighting terrorism, forgetting, or pretending to forget, that it is an occupying power.
The emergence of the heroic Australian citizen Ahmad Al-Ahmad completely shattered Israel’s narrative and that of its “friends” among the far-right forces, which seek to reinforce the idea that Arabs and Muslims are incapable of integrating into advanced democratic societies because of their culture and religion, and that they are all “potential terrorists.” Ahmad Al-Ahmad appeared not only as a hero who confronted terrorism unarmed, but also because he showed humanity, never seen from the Israeli government, in how he engaged with the attacker: he disarmed him without killing him and left it to law-enforcement to deal with him.
Al-Ahmad acted out of his peaceful instincts as a human being and as an Australian citizen who refuses to stand by as people are harmed, regardless of their religion. At the same time, his decency and courage, deeply rooted in Arab culture and values, ran through his veins. Al-Ahmad’s instinctive action has refuted the narrative of generalization and value judgments imposed on Arabs and Muslims.
It is no coincidence that he was the only one to act: it signals to the West that it needs its Arab arrivals, because they have values and principles that have receded in Western societies: courage and helping others. They have sound instincts, they fight terrorism like everyone else and refute the Israeli narrative that renders Arab and Muslim identity an accusation.
