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An award-winning Australian children’s author who has received substantial public funding published an essay on Thursday defending the Bondi Beach Hanukkah massacre and explicitly justifying the murder of a rabbi..
Writing under the name Matt Chun, author Matthew Jones denied the innocence of the Jewish victims and rejected the characterization of the attack as antisemitic.
Chun received AUD 42,452 in taxpayer funding from Creative Australia in May 2023 for a children’s picture book titled Policing in Australia. He has also received multiple forms of recognition within Australia’s children’s literature sector, including a Children’s Literature Fellowship and national illustration awards.
Denying Jewish Innocence
In the essay, Chun repeatedly placed the word “innocent” in quotation marks when referring to the Jews murdered at the Hanukkah gathering. This stripped the victims of civilian status and reframed them as legitimate targets of violence.
He described the Chabad-Lubavitch movement as a “Zionist Jewish-supremacist organisation,” accusing it of promoting settler colonization and the “extermination of Gaza.” According to Chun, Chabad events are political rather than religious, and therefore undeserving of protection.
That framing served a clear purpose — to legitimize murder.
Justifying the Killing of Rabbi Eli Schlanger
Chun explicitly defended the killing of Rabbi Eli Schlanger, citing the rabbi’s political views, charitable fundraising, and travel history as justification for his death.
He rejected descriptions of the attack as antisemitic or of the gathering as a peaceful religious event. Instead, Chun claimed that “Zionist lobbyists,” politicians, police, witnesses, and media outlets fabricated the reporting. Others, he argued, merely repeated the narrative without scrutiny.
The essay concluded with an explicit endorsement of violence. Chun wrote that what he called “genocidal occupation entities” must be dismantled and predicted the eventual collapse of Israel, the United States, and Australia.
A Documented Pattern
In a previous essay, Chun described the October 7, 2023 Hamas massacre as “a courageous act of revolutionary decolonisation.”
In early 2024, he played a leading role in a coordinated doxing campaign targeting Jewish creatives in Australia. The campaign exposed personal information, triggered job losses, and included threats directed at a five-year-old child.
Before and after that campaign, Chun publicly called for boycotts of Jewish-owned businesses and encouraged sustained harassment of Jews and Israelis under the banner of activism.
Take Action
CAM has launched Report It — a secure app to report antisemitic incidents anonymously and in real time. Don’t stay silent — download it today on the Apple Store or Google Play. See it. Report it. Stop it. Together, we can fight this hate.
