Antisemites Smear Bondi Massacre Survivor Arsen Ostrovsky

Yesterday, I dealt with the conspiracy theory that the Bondi Chanukah massacre was a “false flag” operation perpetuated by an Israeli.

Today I turn my attention to another pernicious lie, surrounding one of those injured in the atrocity.

Arsen Ostrovsky is someone I know personally and who I appreciate as an advocate of Israel and the Jewish people. He recently returned to Australia after over a decade in Israel, to take up a position as head of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council Sydney office. He was at the Bondi Chanukah event with his wife and children, and was injured within an inch of his life after a bullet grazed his head:

We are praying for our friend Arsen @Ostrov_A and for all the wounded in the terror attack on the Hanukkah event in Sydney.
Our hearts are with the families of the victims.
Australia must fight antisemitism. pic.twitter.com/hwB28OQSKI

— Oren Marmorstein (@OrenMarmorstein) December 14, 2025

The Jew-haters were quick to try and undermine Arsen’s trauma, firstly mocking him for taking a “selfie” of himself injured.

I haven’t confirmed with Arsen, but I know he is a big believer in documenting things. No doubt he wanted to let the world know more about the atrocity that had unfolded.

Then the haters latched on to something Arsen tweeted and also stated in at least one of his interviews:

Arsen was not at the Nova festival or the surrounding communities on October 7. By “living through October 7”, he meant that he endured it like all Israelis, not that he literally escaped death. Yet the haters, like Susan Abulhawa (who was invited to speak at the Adelaide Festival a few years ago) have latched on to these words to further cast aspersions on him:

Not that it is improbably someone would survive one atrocity and be caught in another – especially as Jew. Alexander Kleytman, one of the victims, was a Holocaust survivor.

But it got worse. The haters also disseminated this picture as “proof” he was faking his injuries:

Leaving aside for a second the ridiculousness of the idea that anyone would fake their injury in full view of the public, the image is clearly AI-generated. Do not even take my word for it – take the word of Australia’s ABC, not known for being pro-Israel (to say the least):

The image was created by Google’s artificial intelligence, which ABC NEWS Verify confirmed by testing it in the company’s Synth ID detector tool, which checks for the company’s invisible digital watermark.

Visual analysis of the image also reveals it is a fake.

The writing on the T-shirt in the image, for example, is unreadable, and does not match the original image.

The “film set” in the background of the deepfake image appears off, with tripod legs crisscrossing and seeming to hover just above the ground.

In a larger, non-cropped version of the image that appeared elsewhere on the internet, there are two cars in the background that appear to morph into each other.

Mr Ostrovsky also appeared on a Channel Nine live stream after having his head bandaged.

He is wearing shorts in the live stream, rather than the pants present in the deepfake, and the blood on his shirt also does not match.

In the hours since the attack, Mr Ostrovsky has posted a photo of himself in a hospital gown as he recovers.

What we are witnessing here is not skepticism or concern for truth, but something far uglier: the weaponization of conspiracy theories to dehumanize a Jewish victim of terror.

When Jews are murdered, it’s a “false flag.” When Jews are wounded, they’re “faking it.” And when facts intervene, the haters simply invent new lies, now turbo-charged by AI.

Arsen Ostrovsky survived a terrorist attack with his family at his side. That should have elicited empathy, not mockery; solidarity, not slander. Yet for the Jew-haters, no amount of evidence will ever suffice, because the lie is the point. The cruelty is the point.

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