Whenever there is a terror attack, there is a small group of conspiracy theorists who inhabit dark regions of the internet that seek to blame Israel, just as Jews were blamed in the past for all manner of evils.<\/p>\n
The Christchurch terror attack is no different, except that there have also been more mainstream voices spreading the pernicious lie at a time of heightened emotion.<\/p>\n
The first mainstream New Zealand news agency to suggest that Israel was connected to the Christchurch massacre was Stuff irresponsibly sharing an Associated Press article with a provocative headline “Christchurch mosque attacks: Alleged gunman Brenton Tarrant visited Israel in 2016<\/a>“.<\/p>\n It is in paragraph six that we learn “Also in late 2016, Tarrant visited Serbia, Montenegro, Bosnia and Herzegovina, and Croatia, where he stopped by historic battle sites, before travelling in Western Europe in 2017”. Yet the headline would suggest Israel is somehow special and there is comment from unnamed “Israeli officials” but no other nation’s officials are sought for comment.<\/p>\n While the AP article doesn’t explicitly suggest Israel had anything to do with the attack, the headline certainly implies so.<\/p>\n Another, more concerning and explicit connection was expressed by Ahmed Bhamji, Chair of Masjid e Umar in Mt Roskill, a mosque affiliated with FIANZ<\/a>. At a rally in Auckland in front of around one thousand people and in a video that was seen more than 2,500 times<\/a>, he said<\/p>\n “… I will not mince words. I stand here and I say I have a very, very strong suspicion that there is some group behind him and I am not afraid to say I feel Mossad is behind…”Ahmed Bhamji<\/cite><\/p><\/blockquote>\n To which a member of the crowd loudly replied “That’s true. Israel is behind this. That’s true.” There was no attempt by MC Joe Carolan to challenge these false and dangerous accusations and no audible challenge from the crowd.<\/p>\n Unbelievable that a community leader unashamedly blamed Israel for the Christchurch terror attack in front of 1k people, a crowd member loudly agreed, and there was no challenge to the conspiracy theory.<\/p>\n Is this inflammatory hate speech endorsed by @FIANZ_NZ<\/a> or rally organisers? pic.twitter.com\/rsUx1RADez<\/a><\/p>\n — David Cumin (@KiwiDaveC) March 25, 2019<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n