Spreading ideology of violence, dehumanization

Don’t fool yourselves. The mob is back, and this time it wears a keffiyeh rather than a swastika armband.”

When all is said and done, antisemitism is fundamentally an ideology of violence. Behind every missive and every barb — whether delivered online, at pro-Hamas rallies or graffitied on the walls of a Jewish communal building — is a message of dehumanization that licenses physical attacks on Jews and their property.

In the nearly five months that have passed since Hamas terrorists orchestrated the horrendous pogrom of Oct. 7 in Israel, antisemitic violence has exploded around the world. There are something like 16 million Jews around the globe, mainly concentrated in Israel and the United States, but with a presence in Europe, Latin America, Africa and Oceania as well. From what I can tell, there isn’t a single Jewish community that hasn’t been scarred by this latest wave of hostility.

Additionally, in the two decades that I’ve been writing about antisemitic violence, there hasn’t been a single episode in which the perpetrator was a public figure or someone with a media profile. I’m not referring here to the antisemitic rhetoric we’ve heard from influencers like the rapper Kanye West, or any number of the prominent elected officials flinging words like “genocide” in Israel’s direction, or asserting that Diaspora Jews who join the Israeli Defense Forces should be locked up on charges of treason and war crimes. I’m talking about the people who have crossed the line into assaults and even murder, which target Jews simply because they are Jews.

The names of individuals we would otherwise have never heard of — like Kobili Traoré, who brutally murdered a Jewish woman, Sarah Halimi, in her Paris apartment in 2017; or Stephan Balliet, the German neo-Nazi who attempted to shoot up a synagogue in the city of Halle, Germany, on Yom Kippur in 2019 — are seared into our consciousness solely as a result of their bestial actions.

But that’s changing.

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Last week, police in the Australian city of Melbourne arrested a known pro-Hamas influencer, a woman who has the ear of some of that country’s elected representatives and whose past activities have earned her media coverage, on the charge of having masterminded the kidnapping and torture of a young man whose only offense was that he works for a Jewish employer.

The 28-year-old Lebanese-Australian woman, Laura Allam, is the CEO of the Al Jannah Foundation, which bills itself as an Islamic humanitarian organization. While Allam’s social-media profiles specify that she is still running Al Jannah, an entry on the Australian Register of Companies notes that the foundation ceased operations in July 2023, less than three years after it was formally incorporated. But while her humanitarian organization may be little more than a husk, Allam has made sure to keep her own voice alive within Australia’s internal debate on the war in Gaza — a debate which, like elsewhere, has been stained by antisemitic invective, conspiracy theories and bloodthirsty celebrations of Israeli deaths.

On Feb. 16, Allam’s pro-Hamas activities took an altogether more sinister turn.

Along with an accomplice — identified by the blog Israellycool as Muhammad Sharab, a pro-Hamas fanatic whose social-media posts attacking Israel are decorated with images of samurai swords and ninjas — Allam is alleged to have seized her unnamed 31-year-old victim late at night in the Melbourne suburb of St. Albans at gunpoint. Because of the draconian restrictions imposed on reporting the case by the Australian authorities, who have banned the publication of Allam’s name and photograph by local media outlets, the full details of the assault have not been released. What we do know, though, is that the victim was so badly beaten that he required extensive hospital treatment.

Since the incident, Allam has remained silent, save for one final post on her Instagram account before it was shut down. With sickening self-regard, Allam depicted herself as a victim, ignored by unnamed “community leaders” who “turn around and say such abhorrent words like ‘this is not our fight’ while a woman in your community has now endured a lifetime of pain, suffering and trauma.”

Such leaders, she went on, had nothing to fear from her, at least for the time being. “I pride myself in my selflessness (sic) and the idea of remaining quiet — for now,” she wrote. “Why? Well, I’d like to hope that you so-called ‘selfless individuals’ realize that if I decide to speak up on what has occurred, it will have the most detrimental effect on our community and every single effort we have put into our movement.”

Allam, it would seem, recognizes that her turn to antisemitic violence would be a setback for the community she claims to represent. Yet there is no apology on her part, merely a tactical decision to “remain quiet — for now.” Quite the pledge from a woman with her record.

• • •

Before news of the attack in Melbourne, Allam had already attracted national attention for her furious messages on social media. “Good riddance,” she declared on learning of the deaths of four IDF soldiers in Gaza.

One day after the Oct. 7 pogrom, she announced that she had “woken up to some great news from our beloved Palestine.”

Allam’s rejoicing in the mass killing, rapes and mutilation that defined Oct. 7 were an obvious signal to Australian politicians to avoid any contact with her — but they didn’t. At a pro-Hamas demonstration outside the Australian parliament in Canberra at the beginning of February, Allam stood alongside senators from the left-wing Green Party, drawing a rebuke from TV host Andrew Bolt.

“The Greens may not have known of Allam’s past, but this is who they find next to them in their gutter,” he stated, in a reference to the news in December that Allam was using the Al Jannah Foundation to resettle Palestinians from Gaza in Australia, which led opposition politicians to question whether supporters of Hamas were being imported into Australia under the guise of humanitarianism.

By orchestrating an assault on someone whose “offense” was to work for a Jewish employer, Allam ceased being a cheerleader for Hamas and became, in effect, a vehicle to spread its vengeance outside the Middle East.

C

heering “resistance” is no longer enough for the pro-Hamas movement cluttering our schools, colleges and streets with their genocidal slogans; they are now duplicating those same “resistance” tactics to intimidate defenseless Jewish communities in their midst.

Allam may be a shocking example of this trend, but sadly, she is not the only one.

Last week, Jewish students at the University of California, Berkeley were forced to evacuate a building where they were due to hold a meeting after pro-Hamas agitators gathered outside, banging on the windows and screaming “intifada, intifada.” Two Jewish students ended up being assaulted.

If you study the video of that episode, you’ll be struck most of all by the demeanor of the mob, their faces a veritable picture of virtue signaling as they bellow “shame on you” at Jewish kids who were just trying to hold a get-together, but who were, in that moment, the embodiment of the hated Zionist state.

Our elected leaders — in the United States, in Europe and elsewhere — have failed us. Every outburst of antisemitic hatred in history has been directed by a mob, and the present situation is no different.

Don’t fool yourselves; the mob is back, and this time it wears a keffiyeh rather than a swastika armband.

If the authorities won’t expel these people from our campuses and imprison them when they engage in attacks on Jews, and if we are unwilling or unable to defend ourselves, we will find, sooner rather than later, that the only option we have is to head for the exits.