Fury over Cathy Wilcox cartoon: Bibi ‘beats drum’ for Bondi Massacre inquiry — Mick Fanning caught in backlash

"Cathy Wilcox — one word: Pathetic. We are not mindless drones. We are independent, critical thinkers who love Australia."

Four days ago, the three-time champ Mick Fanning and a phalanx of Australia’s sporting elite pushed back against their prime minister’s denial of a royal commission into governmental failures surrounding the massacre of Jews Islamists terrorists at a Hanukkah Festival at Bondi Beach. 

More than 60 prominent Australian athletes, including Mick Fanning and other Olympians, signed an open letter urging Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to launch a federal royal commission into rising antisemitism, radicalisation and the deadly Bondi Beach terror attack.

The open letter read, in part: 

“This is not the Australia we represented. This is bigger than politics. It is about the character of our country and the Australia we want future generations to inherit.”

It was a reflection, I think, of the mood among the common people, that the government had let the hysteria about “The Jews” hit boiling point, with prominent government figures marching alongside ISIS flags, banners exalting that cruel ol’ bastard Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and amid cheers of “Globalise the Intifada.”

And whatever you think of the war in Gaza, Israel’s response to attack, Zionism etc, killing unarmed people including a little girl at a Hanukkah Party in Bondi Beach ain’t resistance. A pal of mine worked on the kid after she was filled with bullets from one of the Akram fam’s straight-pull 308 rifles and it’s not something he’s gonna forget real quick. 

A neighbour is a psychologist working with survivors, as well as first responders, and this once bright soul walks around looking like he’s seen the innards of hell.

Now, in a cartoon published by one of Australia’s major newspapers, The Age, and drawn by Walkley Award-winner Cathy Wilcox, it has been suggested that all those calling for the royal commission are but stools of Israel PM Benjamin Netanyahu, the wily operator beating the drum for the unthinking, dumb Australians, which includes Mick Fanning.

Reactions to Cathy Wilcox cartoon

Aboriginal Olympian and the first indigenous woman elected to Federal Parliament Nova Peris described it thus:

Cathy Wilcox — one word: ‘Pathetic’

We are not mindless drones. We are independent, critical thinkers who love Australia. Our Australia.

Many of us spoke publicly after this national tragedy out of a commitment to justice and a determination to confront terrorism, not excuse it.

To portray Australians from across professions who call for accountability as agents of Jews or Israel is vile, dehumanising, and deeply insulting to families who watched their loved ones & innocent people hunted with military-grade weapons by Islamist terrorists.

These families did not lose loved ones to a cartoon. They lost them to real violence. Real hatred. Real evil. Here. On our shores. At our iconic Bondi Beach.

This is how it has always begun.

With the lies. With mockery. With cartoons that strip Jews of humanity and agency, insinuating that Jewish suffering is exaggerated, manipulated, or politically manufactured.

This is the language of libels. And libels have always preceded pogroms.

For centuries, Jews were depicted as schemers and manipulators, as bribers, controllers, sub-human caricatures blamed even for their own deaths. These lies were never harmless. They created permission. And permission led to violence.

This cartoon sits squarely in that tradition.

It mocks the dead, grieving families, and Australians who stand up by portraying calls for accountability as obedience, corruption, and manipulation. Depicting supporters of a Royal Commission, including grieving families, next to a dog holding a sign ‘Dogs for RC’ being “rewarded” by unseen hand giving a bone is unmistakable dehumanisation. It’s sickening.

Mockery in the face of terror is not political insight. It is moral collapse.

History has seen this before. And it never ends well.

Do better for goodness sake and importantly for the safety and love of this great nation.

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Apart from that Cathy Wilcox cartoon, it ain’t the first time the Fairfax Press has been accused of anti-Jew tropes.

Back in 2014 in the Sydney Morning Herald, cartoonish Glen Le Lievre depicted a stereotypically hook-nosed, overweight Jewish man lounging on a couch in a luxurious living room, casually watching television while explosions and destruction raged outside the window in Gaza.

Fairfax issued an unreserved apology, withdrew the cartoon and admitted it was a “serious error of judgment” due to its resemblance to antisemitic imagery from the past.

The Australian Press Council ruled it breached standards by likely causing “substantial offence, distress or prejudice” through racial vilification.