Knife Crime “Terrorism” in Australia

Unless you have been living under a rock, you probably all know about the Sydney mass stabbing at a Bondi Junction shopping centre where seven people were killed including the perpetrator. It made the world news. The reason it made the world news, is because Australia is internationally seen as a safe country (except for those pesky redbacks and taipans), but otherwise free from incidents of mass violence, so this mass stabbing broke the mould. If the same thing happened in say Somalia, you’d be lucky to hear anything about it. Although interestingly, Somali refugee families are sending their sons back to Africa to escape out-of-control knife crime in the UK.

Of course, regarding the Sydney stabbing, online commentators were quick to point the finger without knowing all the details. One side was blaming radical Islamists or jihadists for the attack. The other side was blaming Jewish extremists, even going so far as to naming a particular individual, an innocent Jewish university student, Benjamin Cohen, based entirely on his slight resemblance to a grainy mobile phone image, despite him being 20 years the man’s junior.

As it turns out, both side were wrong. It wasn’t an Islamist or a pro-Israeli Zionist, it was an Aussie English tutor from Queeensland who liked surfing, and who was diagnosed with schizophrenia more than 20 years ago and was off his medication at the time of the stabbings.

Look, I don’t think humans have got any worse over the years. Go back 50 years, and I’m sure there were people spreading similar types of rumours and gossip, but this was typically limited to their circle of friends. Fast-forward to the modern world, and now you can spread the same rumours and gossip to your five million followers. As we saw, things can rapidly get out of hand.

My strategy is pretty simple, if I don’t know for sure, I’ll typically refrain from saying it, although, we all make mistakes, I’m sure, especially in these breaking news environments where the facts have not yet emerged. Although to be fair to some of these online commentators, Channel 7 were reporting that Mr Cohen was the perpetrator, but have since issued an apology. It should also be noted that despite the police knowing the identity of the perpetrator, they delayed the release of that information for whatever reason, perhaps to be 100% certain, allowing online rumours to spread over a 14-hour period. During that time, Mr Cohen was one of the most reviled men on the internet.

NSW Police Inspector Amy Scott was the one that ran towards danger and shot and killed the perpetrator. She has been labelled a hero in the media, which I’m not going to disagree with, but to be fair, the job of a police officer, no, their sworn duty is to protect the public without fear or favour, so she did exactly what society expected of her and what she swore to do when she became a police officer.

As many of you would know, it is illegal for Australians to carry weapons in a defensive capacity: guns, knives, even pepper spray are all outlawed. Consequently, we have individuals using environmental weapons, or improvised weapons, such as bollard man who bravely held the attacker at bay using a shopping centre bollard. The Australian Government obviously appreciate him using a weapon, even if it’s only an improvised one, because they have since offered the French National permanent residency for his extraordinary bravery.

Despite the horror that unfolded in Sydney, it was not labelled a terrorist incident by police. It’s funny how we define these words. From a layman’s perspective, I would define terrorism as the act of causing terror, which certainly happened during this stabbing spree, but the official definition is: “the unlawful use of violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims”. The fact that the perpetrator didn’t have any political aims, it didn’t matter how many people he killed, it was never going to be considered terrorism by the powers that be.

On the other hand, just days later, a second knife attack occurred in Sydney in an Assyrian church, which was labelled an act of terrorism, despite nobody dying. A 16-year-old entered the church and rushed forward to stab the popular Bishop Mar Mari Emmanuel who was presiding over the service. The Conversation ran a piece asking, “Why is the Sydney church stabbing an act of terrorism, but the Bondi tragedy isn’t?” Basically, we answered it before. The Bondi killer was not motivated by a larger political cause. He was just mentally unwell. Whereas the church attacker, although he acted alone, was very likely to have received encouragement and backing from a terrorist organisation. And now it’s being reported that the attacker received a good behaviour bond for a previous knife crime earlier this year. It seems like we don’t like locking up violent offenders here in Australia.

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