There is a measure of comfort to be taken in the fact that Sunday’s terrorist attack at a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, which left at least 15 people dead and many more injured, also produced a hero. Ahmed al-Ahmed, described in news accounts as a local shopkeeper, single-handedly disarmed one of two terrorists and survived being shot twice — a scene that was captured on camera and has since gone viral.
That act of bravery not only saved lives; it served as an essential reminder that humanity can always transcend cultural and religious boundaries.
But the Hanukkah massacre also represents the continuing inability of the government of Anthony Albanese, Australia’s prime minister, to safeguard the country’s Jewish community. In October 2024, a kosher restaurant in Bondi was the target of an arson attack; six weeks later, an Orthodox synagogue was firebombed. Those attacks were attributed to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps of Iran, and the Albanese government duly responded by expelling the Iranian ambassador in Canberra and closing its own embassy in Tehran.
Sadly for Australia, foreign actors alone aren’t the problem. Last year, Jillian Segal, the government’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, warned that “antisemitic behavior is not only present on many campuses, but is an embedded part of the culture.” In the wake of Hamas’s attack of Oct. 7, Greens legislator Jenny Leong went on a rant accusing “the tentacles” of the “Jewish lobby and the Zionist lobby” of “infiltrating into every single aspect of what is ethnic community groups.” Jewish homes, neighborhoods and a day care center have been targeted by vandals and arsonists. At least one of the alleged shooters in Sunday’s attack was known to authorities, “but not in an immediate threat perspective,” according to a top Australian intelligence official.
I heard an earful of alarm from Jewish communal leaders when I last visited Australia in June 2024, but nothing seemed to change. On Sunday, the Australian Jewish Association posted a message to Facebook: “How many times did we warn the Government? We never felt once that they listened.”
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They are probably listening now. But the problem for the Albanese government, which in September recognized a Palestinian state and has been outspoken in its condemnation of Israeli actions in Gaza, is that the moral line between the routine demonization of Israel and attacks on Jews who are presumed to support Israel isn’t necessarily clear. On Sunday, Albanese said that “the evil that was unleashed at Bondi Beach today is beyond comprehension.” In fact, it’s entirely comprehensible. For fanatics who have been led to believe that the Jewish state is the apotheosis of evil, killing Jews represents a twisted notion of justice. Even when the victims are unarmed civilians. Even when they are celebrating an ancient, joyful holiday.
There’s a larger lesson here that goes far beyond Australia.
Though we’ll probably learn more in the weeks ahead about the mind-set of Sunday’s killers, it’s reasonable to surmise that what they thought they were doing was “globalizing the intifada.” That is, they were taking to heart slogans like “resistance is justified,” and “by any means necessary,” which have become ubiquitous at anti-Israel rallies the world over. For many of those who chant those lines, they may seem like abstractions and metaphors, a political attitude in favor of Palestinian freedom rather than a call to kill their presumptive oppressors.
But there are always literalists — and it’s the literalists who usually believe their ideas should have real-world consequences. On Sunday, those consequences were written in Jewish blood. History tells us that it won’t be the last time.
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