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 his 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 Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, and the Albanese administration duly responded by expelling the Iranian ambassador in Canberra and closing its own embassy in Tehran.
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’ 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 leaders when I last visited Australia in June 2024, but nothing seemed to change. On Sunday, the Australian Jewish Association posted: “How many times did we warn the Government? We never felt once that they listened.”