In February, Australia descended into a kind of Jew-baiting chaos that seemed completely uncharacteristic of a country known for its relaxed vibes. At the center of that storm was a mass doxxing of Jews: The contents of a WhatsApp group for Jewish creatives was leaked, and anti-Semites used the personal information of members of that group to track them down and harass and threaten them.

A feminist writer had admitted to releasing info from the group, but it remained a mystery how she had gotten her hands on it. Now that mystery has been solved by the Wall Street Journal. The personal information of the now-targeted Jews was leaked by a New York Times reporter who was part of the group. She appears to have shared it with the subject of her own story, a vicious anti-Zionist who had been criticized by members of the WhatsApp group.

There are several levels, then, of unethical behavior here. Most of the commentary has focused, understandably, on the journalistic malpractice at play. The Times even admitted publicly that the reporter, Natasha Frost, had “inappropriately shared information with the subject of a story to assist the individual in a private matter, a clear violation of our ethics.”

Others have focused on the fact that Frost had touched off a massive wave of anti-Semitic harassment that has yet to taper off. Some people went into hiding. Others had to move. One family received a picture of their five-year-old daughter with a note that said “We know where you live.” Jewish actors were kicked out of their troupe; Jewish musicians were fired; Jewish storefronts were vandalized. In total, the personal information of about 600 Jews was released into this atmosphere.

But there’s more to contemplate here. The story Frost ultimately wrote painted the group of Jews as a racialist pressure gang whose objections succeeded because the group’s target was radio host Antoinette Lattouf, a Lebanese Jew-baiter. The broadcaster who’d hired the Lattouf ended up cutting her temporary gig by a couple days after Lattouf ignored directives to avoid Jew-baiting on social media. So the targets of anti-Semitism were presented as racists for objecting to the anti-Semitism that actual racists were subjecting them to.

This is a common theme of anti-Israel propaganda. The fabricated narrative of decolonization holds that the millennia-old Jewish community from Judea is actually a century-young European project, despite the hilarious fact that the name “Palestine” is literally a European settler creation. (This is called psychological projection, and Israel’s enemies are addicted to engaging in it.) In part, this is because modern progressive ideology requires every situation to be shoehorned into a racial binary, despite the ahistorical nature of this misunderstanding of the concept of race. Progressives simply hold up a color palette to any dispute and assign places in a permanent global race war.

Another problem with the Frost saga is how a private support group for grieving Jews is remodeled in the press as the flexing of Jewish power and control. Jewish organizing is made into nefarious lobbying. Intra-communal solidarity is presented to the world as the protocols of the elders.

These are just a couple of the ways Jews are told by society that they cannot participate as equal citizens because their intentions are always in doubt. What are these Jews really up to, reporters like Natasha Frost wonder.

Which brings us to another angle. Natasha Frost was an early member of a Jewish WhatsApp group, so I will take her at her word that she is Jewish. If that’s the case, this sort of scandal has other devastating consequences, such as sowing distrust among the Jews of Australia. What kind of psychopath joins a group of co-religionists who are in mourning simply to blow up all their lives once she has enough dirt? In the future, Australian Jews will wonder if there are such psychopaths lurking in their other “private” groups as well.

The message of this WhatsApp disaster is the same one sent by people tearing down pictures of kidnapped Israeli children or those who harass memorial services or scream at devastated parents who are just trying to find out what happened to their son or daughter: If Jews want to grieve or commiserate or involve themselves in a country’s politics and culture, they must do so quietly and in private and as individuals, neither seen nor heard. Otherwise, they will reap the whirlwind.