Not long after the Hamas attack of nearly two years ago, I began perceiving a pattern. With Israel’s reprisal accelerating and Gazan deaths climbing, the near unanimous support for Israel in countries like Australia was starting to crumble.

The little criticism allowed in the legacy media was preceded by the obligatory condemnation of Hamas’ 7 October atrocities and countered by pro-Israel objections. But on social media, in the independent press and platforms such as Pearls and Irritations, concern was mounting over Israel’s disproportionate response and its implacable disregard for the suffering it was inflicting on the Palestinian people.

This gave rise to expression among university students setting up encampments on their campuses, and on the streets and parks where pro-Palestinian rallies were held. Many protesting were Jews like me, sickened by Israel’s carrying out what was patently a genocide in our name. Over time, what began as sympathy for the 7 October victims in southern Israel was shifting towards the Palestinian victims in Gaza.

But like many bullies, Israel is touchy about criticism, and is notorious for its efforts in drumming up support among Western editors, journalists, politicians and businesses. Along with its enablers in the diaspora it pushed for a wholesale adoption of the contested IHRA definition of antisemitism. As the genocide proceeded, Australia was plunged into a full-blown antisemitism panic.

Israel claims to be the bulwark against global antisemitism. But let me be clear: Israel needs antisemitism. It’s the perfect diversionary tactic. Its department of public information, its ministry for the diaspora and combatting antisemitism, its ban on foreign journalists in Gaza, the IDF’s legitimisation cells, not to mention its intelligence services, Shin Bet and Mossad – all are directed, inter alia, towards the task of moulding public opinion, shielding the public from Israel’s goals of total domination of the Palestinian people and total assumption of their land, and of what actually has happened and continues to be so on the West Bank and in Gaza.

Other countries, including our own, have their foreign and domestic operatives. ASIO, ASIS; FBI, CIA and so on. The CIA’s interference in foreign countries is well-known, if often discounted at the time, as in its role in the Whitlam Government’s dismissal. But Israel’s hasbara since 7 October has been so blatant, so obvious, it’s been impossible to discount it, especially when considering that the Australian Federal Police itself announced that in relation to at least three of the incidents, there was cause to suspect “foreign operatives”.

In response to this, I began matching the antisemitic incidents with the escalating shift in public opinion away from Israel. But as the months went by, the pattern I discerned became so blatant my tracking could scarcely keep up with it and, truth be told, the exercise became rather tedious. The fact was that Australians were waking up to Israel’s history of apartheid, ethnic cleansing, not to mention the war crimes of genocide and starvation. Yet in the face of this, Anthony Albanese found it necessary to appoint the former chair of a vigorous pro-Israel lobby as his special envoy on antisemitism, a woman whose recent report to the government would have her operate as a kind of commissar for regulating opinion, if her outrageous recommendations were ever adopted. Like many an avowed Zionist, the special envoy would have us believe that to criticise Israel for its actions against the people it has occupied for 78 years is a form of antisemitism.

It’s worthwhile noting here that rarely if ever have the police, or our governments, state or federal, acknowledged the bleeding obvious: that the rise in any perceived antisemitism might well be caused by a heavily armed Israel’s shockingly disproportionate vengeance against those they have imprisoned in Gaza since 2007.

For a time, the campaign to weaponise antisemitism achieved at least one of its aims, diverting attention from Israel’s relentless bombing, the continuing displacement and the ever-rising death toll among Gazan civilians, journalists and aid workers, and the imminent Gaza-wide famine caused by Israel’s ongoing and ever-more rigorous blockade. Yet, by March this year, the campaign had lost a great deal of its power. By this time, more and more Australians were clear over who the victims actually were. The tipping point was an estimated 100,000 to 300,000 protesters marching in the rain over Sydney’s Harbour Bridge. At last, arguably in response, the Albanese Government acted in the face of the pro-Israel lobby, announcing its intention to recognise a Palestinian state at this month’s UN General Assembly.

True to form, Israel’s prime minister, an alleged war criminal, kept up the hasbara, spraying Albanese with vitriol: “History will remember Albanese for what he is: a weak politician who betrayed Israel and abandoned Australia’s Jews.” Maybe this time, though, Netanyahu went too far in condemning our prime minister. As Home Affairs Minister Burke countered, Albanese’s action was a sign of his strength rather than any weakness.

By now I’d been convinced, owing to its form in such exercises, that the spurt of antisemitic incidents here were indeed Mossad false flags; though at this stage, I told myself, all that could be proved was a correlation, not causation. Then, not long after Netanyahu’s outburst, we learned from ASIO chief Mike Burgess, with Albanese and Wong at his side, that after months of intensive investigation the culprit was uncovered in at least two of the incidents – the arson at Melbourne’s Adassa Synagogue and the damage done to a Sydney kosher restaurant in Bondi. No, it wasn’t Israel’s Mossad after all, but Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. Moreover, on the strength of these findings, we learned, the government had closed its Tehran embassy and was sending Iran’s ambassador packing. The government would also be listing the IRGC a terrorist organisation. In concert with this, the media provided us with a list of similar Iranian “cut-out” attacks in other jurisdictions.

While I had to admit Iranian responsibility was possible, it still seemed unlikely. Nor, unsurprisingly, was I alone in this. There was the question of what Iran had to gain from the attacks. There was the question of its own Jewish population. Yet, what even I had underestimated was Israel’s jaw-dropping hubris. Within two days of Australia’s announcement came Israel’s attempt through its spokesman, David Mercer, to take credit for the decision. Then an article in the Jerusalem Post suggested that “Israeli intelligence forces might have played a part in uncovering the IRGC plot …” Next, Sky News was revealing that “a tip-off from Israeli intelligence assisted ASIO during its investigation unravelling the Iran terror attacks”.

Cui bono? Who benefits? Possibly Iran, more likely Israel. But in the long run, none of us do. Our intelligence agencies have their purposes, and sometimes, as in the case of 7 October, their valid warnings go unheeded. Yet, all too often the secrecy in which they operate has encouraged a lawlessness and dissembling of their own, and that of the governments they serve. In this case, pointing the finger does little but stoke fear and forestall action. Iran may be Israel’s bogey, and it’s hardly an admirable state. But it’s Israel that’s been dropping the bombs.

The views expressed in this article may or may not reflect those of Pearls and Irritations.