Following the attack at Bondi Beach in Australia, CyberWell – a nonprofit trusted partner of Meta (Facebook, Instagram and Threads), TikTok and YouTube working alongside the platforms to combat online antisemitism – identified a familiar and troubling online pattern, reflecting a wave of violent and antisemitic discourse on social media: glorification of the terrorist attack and calls for further violence against Jews, blaming the victims for false claims of orchestrating the event, and spreading conspiracy theories about a Jewish/Israeli “false flag” operation. This pattern mirrors dynamics CyberWell has documented repeatedly after antisemitic attacks worldwide.
Real-time monitoring conducted by CyberWell after the Bondi Beach attack uncovered disturbing, violent content celebrating the deaths of Jewish victims, praising perpetrators as “heroes” and framing the attack as “deserved” because of the victims’ Jewish identity – one poster even drew a parallel between the Bondi Beach shooting attack and the 1972 Munich Olympics massacre, in which eleven Israeli Jewish athletes and a Munich police officer were brutally murdered.
CyberWell also identified several viral, victim-blaming conspiracy sub-narratives, including false claims of alleged Israeli military or intelligence ties to the perpetrator, claims of prior Israeli “foreknowledge” based on fabricated or misleading Google Trends screenshots and posts discrediting victims, including claims that injuries were “staged” or “acted.”
As part of its initial monitoring, CyberWell analyzed a sample dataset consisting of 87 posts and 77 comments (164 content items). Despite its limited size, this sample accumulated more than 8.1 million views and over 255,000 interactions (likes, shares and comments), underscoring how quickly harmful narratives can spread online. These figures represent only a snapshot of a much wider discourse, as exposure and sharing data for comments is not fully measurable. To support monitoring at scale, CyberWell also provided specific recommendations – such as keyword combinations – to help identify content associated with these narratives and facilitate removal at scale.
CyberWell emphasizes that these findings should not be viewed in isolation. Rather, they reflect one instance within a recurring cycle the organization has tracked across multiple attacks targeting Jewish communities.
Forthcoming analysis from CyberWell of online discourse following 11 targeted violent incidents against Jews — including the October 7 massacre in Israel, arson attacks on synagogues in Australia, organized violence in Europe, and terrorist attacks and physical assaults in the United States — reveals a consistent trajectory. After each incident, online spaces become arenas where violence is contextualized, justified, normalized, or rhetorically redirected toward the victims themselves, including through claims that Jews orchestrated attacks against themselves – illustrating that that this pattern is part of a wider phenomenon that CyberWell has been tracking.
In many cases, this discourse does not remain abstract. CyberWell has documented how such narratives often escalate, serving as a gateway to more extreme rhetoric, including explicit calls for further violence.
“We are deeply concerned by the speed of spread and the volume of this content,” said CyberWell CEO Tal-Or Cohen Montemayor. “Furthermore, this discourse attempts to eliminate any trace of description or recognition that Jews are victims. It conveys that Jews are not worthy of empathy, protection or recognition, thus laying the framework for the next attack.”
The non-profit also notes a significant shift in how this content spreads. Increasingly, it is not driven primarily by automated networks like bots, but by real users, sometimes amplified by influencers and recommendation algorithms that reward sensational or extreme material, increasing exposure of everyday users to extremist online content.
CyberWell stresses that overt calls for additional violence and post-event glorification – should be understood as early warning indicators of broader societal risk. Addressing them requires platforms and policymakers to close the gap, recognizing that current policies to address this cycle of violence are either missing or insufficient.
Montemayor explains, “When violence against Jews is contextualized, justified, or reframed through conspiracy narratives that shift blame away from the perpetrators and onto the victims, the harm does not end with the physical attack. This discourse strips victims of empathy and accountability; and helps normalize further violence. Ignoring these patterns allows them to repeat.”
The organization will release new, comprehensive research in the coming weeks examining these recurring post-attack discourse cycles across multiple platforms and geographies, and their implications for digital policy and community safety.
CyberWell is an independent, internationally focused, tech-rooted nonprofit combating the spread of antisemitism online. Its AI-technologies monitor social media in English and Arabic for posts that promulgate antisemitism, Holocaust denial and promote violence against Jews and their allies based on the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s (IHRA) working definition of antisemitism. Its analysts review and report this content to platform moderators while indexing all verified posts in the first-ever open database of antisemitic social media posts, democratically cataloging it for transparency at app.cyberwell.org. Through partnerships, education and real-time alerts, CyberWell partners with social media platforms and their moderators to help them enforce their policies more effectively promoting proactive steps against online Jew-hate. For more information, visit: https://cyberwell.org/.
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