Massacre In Australia

On Sunday, the worst shooting attack in modern Australian history happened. It was a terror attack against the Jewish community in Sydney.

Two gunmen killed at least 15 people during a Hanukkah event on Sunday at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Officials acknowledged it was a terrorist attack on Australia’s Jewish community, the country’s worst mass shooting in almost 30 years.

The suspects were a father and a son who legally owned six guns, despite the incredibly restrictive firearm laws in Australia. The two shooters were reportedly radical Muslims. They attacked the “Chanukah by the Sea” celebration, where local Jews gathered to light the first candle of the eight nights of Hanukkah.

The killers were armed with shotguns and a bolt-action rifle. They killed at least 15 people. The shooting went on for at least 20 minutes while the police did very little. When you see the tape, what you see is people legitimately ignoring their job. You see the police cowering in fear. Perhaps it was out of fear, perhaps incompetence. But when you have a continuous mass shooting happening, and you have apparently at least four police officers present doing nothing, you do have to ask some questions about the system in which this is existing.

One of the people killed was a Holocaust survivor, Alex Kleytman, who was killed while shielding his wife in the middle of the attack. He had traveled to Bondi Beach with his wife of 57 years for the Hanukkah event. He was shot and killed as he lay on the ground on top of his wife, saving his wife in his final act.

Eyewitness Arslan Ostrovsky, who was grazed by a shot in the head but survived, recalled:

I was with my family. It was a Hanukkah celebration. There were hundreds of people. There were children. There were elderly families enjoying themselves. Children, kids at a festival, playing. And then all of a sudden, it’s absolute chaos. There’s guns, fire everywhere, people ducking. It was absolute chaos. We didn’t know what was happening, where the gunfire was coming from us, some blood gushing in front of me. 

I saw people hit, some people fall to the ground. My only concern was “Where are my kids. Where are my kids? Where’s my family?”

I survived October 7. I lived in Israel the last 13 years. We came here only two weeks ago to go to work for the Jewish community, to fight antisemitism, to fight this bloodthirsty, ravaging hatred. … We’ve lived through this. We’re going to get through this, and we’re going to get the bastards that did this. … 

I saw, I saw at least one gunman firing; it looked like a shotgun, firing randomly in all directions. I saw children falling to the floor. Elderly, I saw invalids … It was an absolute bloodbath. Blood gushing everywhere. October 7. That’s the last time I saw this. I never thought I would see this in Australia. Not in my lifetime. On Bondi Beach, of all places. This iconic place with your children.

I would be lying if I said that Jews around the world don’t expect this sort of thing to happen, especially in the aftermath of the radical increase in Islamic antisemitism and its presence all over the globe, and the increase in generalized antisemitism all over the globe.

When you’re talking about the presence of radical Muslims, you can’t just talk about antisemitic terror attacks. There’ve been a wide variety of terror attacks by radicalized Muslims all over the world, including in the United States. Whether you’re talking about the Pulse nightclub shooting or whether you are talking about the attack on two National Guard members just a couple of weeks ago, or you’re talking about radical Muslims who decide to drive trucks into Christmas markets in Europe, this has become a regular feature of Western life: attacks on people who are non-Muslim on the basis of their religion.

There have been warnings going out from the Australian Jewish community for two years about the radical increase in antisemitic attacks, including the firebombing of a synagogue.

There have been questions about the policies that have been promoted by the Australian government to import radical Muslims into the country and to make excuses for their violent actions. Questions asked about why hundreds of thousands of people in places like Australia marched in support of the terrorist group Hamas, or why, in the immediate aftermath of October 7, there were rallies at the Sydney Opera House in which people were shouting “Gas the Jews!”

When there’s a country that imports and tolerates this sort of stuff, are we supposed to be shocked when some of these people are flying ISIS flags? It turns out that they are perfectly happy to commit acts of terrorism.

Should we be shocked by that? Australia’s Muslim population right now is around 813,000 people, representing about 3.2% of the total Australian population. It has increased 450% from 1991 to 2021, and the Muslim population of Sydney represents 6.3% of the total population, which is pretty significant. Thus, it should not be a shock that, according to a report published Tuesday by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the country saw 1654 antisemitic incidents during the 12-month period from October 1, 2024, to September 30, 2025. That’s about five times the annual average recorded in the decade prior to the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack.

It is not a shock that this has been happening with increasing frequency, especially given the fact that the government of Australia, a very left-wing Labor government, has decided to normalize and mainstream this sort of stuff.

Linda Bennett Menasha, the president of the National Council of Jewish Women in Australia, told The Times of Israel, “I’m horrified and devastated that this happened, but not shocked. Over the past two years, antisemitism has been rising by the month, and the government has not listened to our pleas. When there is no visible consequence to incitement, violence always ensues.”

There have been escalating antisemitic incidents in Australia for years. Miranda Devine wrote in the New York Post: 

It is all so sickeningly predictable. Unchecked antisemitism, cowardly appeasement, lax policing and foolish immigration decisions half a century in gestation have coalesced in multicultural southwestern Sydney, an hour’s drive from Bondi. … In the two years since the Hamas attack on Israel, synagogues in Sydney have been firebombed, kosher restaurants vandalized, cars outside Jewish homes torched and rancid antisemitic graffiti have become ubiquitous along the Bondi promenade: “Kill Jews” is the mantra. Every weekend for at least two years, downtown Sydney has been shut down by Palestinian protests.

This is what “globalize the intifada” looks like.

Intifada is violent action, violent resistance.

When you globalize it, you mean this: kill Jews.

No one has made more room for antisemitism in Australia than Anthony Albanese and his terrible government.

As the gifted writer Ayaan Hirsi Ali noted:

One truth must be spoken without hesitation. Islamist extremism isn’t merely another grievance-driven movement. It is an existential threat to Western society and to the values that sustain it. It rejects pluralism, despises freedom of conscience, and targets Jews and Christians precisely because those traditions stand for limits on power and the dignity of the individual. History shows this pattern clearly. Where such extremism is tolerated, minorities suffer first, and the wider society follows.

Correct. And pretending that you are hiding behind the guise of anti-Zionism in order to attack Jews as a conspiratorial force in the West, manipulating the systems in order to commit genocide, and promoting every lie issued by Hamas, is going to lead to violence.

Pretending otherwise is blind or stupid or evil — or all three.