Australia Should Look Back In Anger

On December 14, the first day of Hanukkah, celebrations in Bondi Beach were disrupted by two gunmen who aimed fire at a Jewish crowd. 15 people have been killed, with many more injured. One of the perpetrators is shot dead, and another one, named Naveed Akram, is held in custody, with his home being raided in Bonnyrigg, a small town in Western Sydney. Akram’s rifle was thankfully disarmed by a bystander who the New South Wales Premier Chris Minns has deservedly heralded a hero.

Bondi Beach is an area not just known for its famous sunny beaches, but also for its concentrated Jewish population. Last year, a knife attack occurred at a shopping centre in Bondi Junction, resulting in six deaths, including five women. Today, a Holocaust survivor and a rabbi are among the many people killed. This atrocity will not be the last until the country’s public can talk about the possible causes of these attacks.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese condemned the events as “a targeted attack towards Jewish Australians”, but says that his government takes “antisemitism seriously”. Albanese has spent an entire year woefully overlooking frequent vandalism of childcare centres for Jewish families, and firebombings of synagogues in Sydney and Melbourne. Hoping will simmer tensions between Muslims and Jews, his government has launched a convoy towards antisemitism, while recognising the state of Palestine, hoping that a two-state solution will immediately arrive. His words, overall, have only led to further scrutiny of Jewish Australians.

Since the October 7 attacks, Australia has witnessed a resurgence in antisemitism. Many will dismiss these concerns as false alarms and use the ongoing conflict in Gaza and their hatred of Israel as an excuse to mask their apathy towards Jews being attacked. Some, such as ABC Radio presenter Matt Bevan, tweeted that the massacre should not warrant abuse of innocent Muslim Australians. Bevan reminded them of Man Haron Monis, a cleric who declared loyalty towards ISIS, who took hostage numerous patrons at the Lindt cafe in 2014, killing two people. The hashtag #IllRideWithYou was evoked to ensure solidarity with that contingent. As the late comedian Norm Macdonald famously tweeted:

“What terrifies me is if ISIS were to detonate a nuclear device and kill 50 million Americans. Imagine the backlash against peaceful Muslims?”

Antisemitism in Australia has been embedded in some of the country’s cultural and political elites, especially among the left. Timothy Cootes wrote in Quadrant magazine that many academics, who proudly push their nose against Zionism, also believe that Australia is a settler-colony that has wiped out much of Indigenous Australian life. Such claims require an act of dismantling, and as Cootes writes:

“Decolonisation, as activists and professors like to remind each other, is not a metaphor: it must involve the taking back of land and the reclamation of sovereignty and one might have to be armed when doing so”

Many incidents, before the massacre in Bondi, also raised questions about whether the ideology of multiculturalism can function, with immigrants not assimilating into Australia properly. In February 2025, a duo of Muslim nurses was caught telling an influencer that they murder patients who are ancestrally linked with Israel. This incident goes beyond being a violation of their professional duty to save people. Still, considering that one of the nurses was made an Australian citizen from Afghanistan in 2021, his hatred of a particular race would have also damaged the Australian way of life.

All of these topics are essential in ensuring that Western Civilisation can emotionally contain itself. Keeping Jewish Australians safe is the most important part of this conversation, especially when attacks on them aren’t given more critical attention. Australia should look back in anger that a tragic event occurred in a place usually considered to welcome everyone. It will take a long time for all Australians to move towards the healing phase if people who have confronted the hatred head-on knew that something like this would inevitably happen here. It now has, and we are facing severe consequences.