The recent massacre in Sydney, which took place during an armed attack on a public gathering and resulted in the deaths of dozens of people, is one of the starkest expressions of the barbarism of the present global order. Regardless of the identity of the victims, this massacre is a horrific and abhorrent crime against humanity and must be condemned without reservation.
No crime can be justified by reference to religion, ethnicity, or collective identity. Just as the killing of people in Iran by the Islamic Republic, the bloody repression of workers, women, and protesters, and just as the systematic slaughter of the people of Gaza by the Israeli state are crimes against humanity, so too the massacre in Sydney is part of the same global chain of organized violence reproduced by states, power blocs, and imperialist logic.
In this context, making a clear and uncompromising distinction between antisemitism and criticism of Zionism and Israeli state fascism is a political and moral necessity. Antisemitism is a reactionary form of racism and an ideological weapon in the service of fascism and global reaction. It has nothing in common with emancipatory struggle.
Opposition to Zionism, by contrast, is criticism of a colonial, racist, and state project built upon occupation, apartheid, and organized massacres. The deliberate conflation of these two issues is used as a tool to silence every radical criticism of the crimes of the Israeli state.
The roots of these tragedies lie not in “individual hatred,” but in an order continuously reproduced by states and reactionary rulers. The wars fueled by Khamenei, Netanyahu, and Trump have created a global atmosphere of militarism, nationalism, religious fanaticism, and deadly polarization, whose direct result is the normalization of massacre, terror, and the destruction of human life.
The answer to this barbarism is not to line up behind one state or another, but to build international class solidarity, struggle against all forms of racism, religious sectarianism, and chauvinism, and to stand with the victims of all states—from Iran to Palestine, from Sydney to every place where capital and power sacrifice human beings.
The massacre in Sydney, the repression in Iran, and Israel’s slaughter and devastation in Gaza are links in the same chain of crimes organized by the rulers of this hellish order. Our enemy is not “the peoples,” but the states, capital, and the global system that feeds on human blood.
Against war and massacre, against militarism and the politics of hatred
No to antisemitism, no to Zionism; no to all murderous states
Long live the global struggle of the working class to end war, racism, and exploitation
14 December 2025
Internationalist Workers’ Organization
