Nearly one month after the deadly attack at Bondi Beach in Australia, CyberWell has found that online reactions to the attack led to a surge in the glorification of violence, calls for further attacks against Jews, victim-blaming claims that Jews orchestrated the incident, and conspiracy theories portraying it as a Jewish or Israeli “false flag” operation.
Cyberwell, a nonprofit trusted partner of Meta, TikTok and YouTube to address online antisemitism, analysed a sample of 164 pieces of content, which generated more than 8.1 million views and over 255,000 interactions, including likes, shares and comments.
The organisation said the sample represents only a partial snapshot of the broader online conversation but mirrors patterns it has documented and previously flagged to platforms, following other antisemitic attacks since 7 October terrorist attack by Hamas in Israel. These include synagogue arsons in Australia, organised violence in Europe and terrorist attacks and physical assaults in the United States.
CyberWell said that in those cases, online spaces often became arenas where violence was justified, normalised or redirected toward victims through conspiracy narratives, including claims that Jews orchestrated attacks against themselves.
“We are deeply concerned by the nature and volume of this content. This discourse attempts to quickly erase any acknowledgement of Jews as victims of violence. This type of online antisemitism in the wake of the horrific Bondi Beach terror attack, like other targeted attacks, has one dehumanising message: that Jews are not worthy of empathy, protection, or sympathy,” CyberWell founder & CEO Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor said.
“This purposeful dehumanisation and open calls to additional violence we observed in our analysis lay the groundwork for the next attack.”
Many posts, the organisation said, celebrated the deaths of Jewish victims, praised the attacker and framed the violence as justified because of the victims’ Jewish identity.
In one example, a post written in Arabic compared the Bondi Beach attack to the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, in which 11 Israeli athletes and a German police officer were killed, praising those who murder Jews “generation after generation”.
The group also identified several conspiracy narratives shifting blame from the perpetrator to the victims, including false claims of Israeli military or intelligence involvement, assertions of Israeli “foreknowledge” based on misleading or fabricated Google Trends screenshots and posts claiming that victims’ injuries were staged or exaggerated.
CyberWell also found a screenshot of a fake Facebook account under the name ‘David Cohen’ circulating across all major platforms, with the image of one of the terrorists on it. This was used to support the wild conspiracy claiming that the terrorist was a former IDF soldier.
“When violence against Jews is justified or reframed through conspiracy narratives meant to shift the blame from perpetrators to victims, the harm does not end with the physical attack,” Montemayor said.
“This discourse strips victims of empathy and accountability and helps normalise further violence against a minority group that is viciously under attack.”
CyberWell also noted a shift in how such content spreads online. Rather than being driven mainly by algorithms or bots, much of the amplification after last month’s attack came from real users, in some cases boosted by influencers and recommendation systems that reward sensational or extreme material.
“Post-attack glorification of violence and conspiracy-driven victim blaming are indicators of broader societal risk, including erosion of trust, social cohesion, and the breakdown of perceived truth,” Montemayor said.
“Social media platforms should be leveraging community standards, Trust & Safety mechanisms, and the generative AI to account for and mitigate the risks around these conspiracy theories that perpetuate more violence.”
The findings depict disturbing and concerning patterns of behaviour, which are fuelled by social media algorithms.
