Antisemitism royal commission LIVE: Daughter of Bondi terror victim provides evidence

Welcome to our live coverage of the first day of public hearings at the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion.

Former High Court judge Virginia Bell will preside over the first block of public hearings in Sydney, with the focus to be on the definition of antisemitism, and the lived experiences of Jewish Australians.

Sheina Gutnick, the daughter of Bondi Beach terror attack victim Reuven Morrison, is the first witness before the Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion when public hearings begin on Monday.

Stefanie Schwartz, president of the board of Mount Sinai College, is giving evidence.

The college is an independent Jewish day school in Sydney. Schwartz says it plays a vital role in preserving Jewish identity, tradition and culture.

She said her young daughter was at Bondi last year on the night of the Bondi attack, and the school has had to put into place many psychological supports.

It has to conduct risk assessments for activities including walks across the road to the park, excursions and sport.

Extra guards have been employed, and capital works are required to make the school feel more secure for the students.

Ben also tells the inquiry that “two or three days after Hanukkah” last year a “visibly Jewish” car with a menorah (seven-branched candelabra) on it was firebombed or set alight near his home.

He said Jewish people were “watching our physical safety erode in real time”.

The Jewish Council of Australia said in a media release on Monday that it had been granted leave by the royal commission to appear at its first hearing block.

“We are appearing to ensure that the commission hears from Jewish Australians who face exclusion and silencing for their human rights advocacy in support of Palestinians,” Sarah Schwartz, executive officer at the Jewish Council of Australia, said.

The council said it would argue that “definitions or applications of antisemitism that conflate anti-Zionism with antisemitism are counterproductive to anti-racism work”.

Schwartz said that when “institutions treat Jews as a politically homogenous bloc, who all support Israel, it obscures the real diversity of our community and misdirects policy responses away from the genuine drivers of racism”.

A witness who wished to be known by his first name only, Ben, grew up in Bondi and moved to Melbourne in his 20s while his parents remained in Sydney. His parents now live in Israel.

He gave evidence that his parents and brother were among a group of about six people leaving synagogue in October 2013 in Bondi who were “set upon by a few people wielding weapons, and they were bashed by quite a few youths and they were severely injured”.

“We never expected Jews to be hunted on Bondi Beach,” the witness known as AAM continues.

Australia was once the safest place in the world for Jews “and it is not any more”, she tells the royal commission. Jewish people are worried about “what could possibly come next”.

“My family and I no longer want to live in Australia. We don’t feel safe here. We don’t feel welcome.

“We will move to Israel at the end of the year. For my family, we’ve had enough. It is not OK.”

A Melbourne mother, who is also giving evidence anonymously under the pseudonym AAM, said a wall outside her children’s school had been spray-painted in 2024 with the words “Jew die”.

“I’m really sad to say … that stuff is standard,” she said, when asked how her children reacted.

The school was akin to a compound, she said, with “security guards with guns outside”.

She says she tells her children that “if you have to run away, make sure you’re wearing comfy shoes”.

She wears runners instead of heels to synagogue now, she said, but she no longer feels comfortable going there.

AAL also told the commission of his experience of being at the Sydney Opera House on October 9, when the sails were lit up in the colours of the Israeli flag following the Hamas attack two days earlier.

The man, who moved to Australia from South Africa many decades ago, was at the Opera House to see a production when he walked outside to see a “wild, maddened crowd”.

He said he saw a man being “frog-marched” away by two policemen. The man, according to witness AAM, seemed to have an Israeli flag under his arm but was being forcibly moved on by police “for his own safety”.

“The person expressing solidarity with Jewish victims was treated as the problem, while those expressing violent hatred were given a free hand,” the witness said.

A grandfather, giving evidence anonymously under the pseudonym AAL, has spoken with great emotion about his fears for his grandchildren encountering antisemitism in Australia.

“I love this country. I thought we’d made a great choice,” he said, his voice trembling with emotion.

He said it was “not the Australia I chose to call home”.

AAM also told the commission that his young granddaughter, who attended a non-Jewish school, was subjected to a substitute English teacher “performing several Hitler salutes” in the classroom.

“My granddaughter was 13, 14 at that stage and left the classroom deeply shocked”.

He said, “to the principal’s credit, she invited my daughter and my granddaughter to talk to her and praised her for being brave”.

Ultimately, after losing several friends, his granddaughter left the school and was enrolled in a Jewish day school, “which is also a little confronting to go past armed guards as she goes to school but she is much happier there”.

Sheina Gutnick has provided a statement to the royal commission that has not yet been released.

She told the commission she had “received and seen hundreds of comments … that I should have been killed in the Bondi attack, calls to kill Israelis, [and] comments celebrating violence against Jews”.

She said she had also seen claims that attacks against the Jewish community “are false flags staged by Jews themselves for attention and sympathy”.

Gutnick said there had been a “massive shift” after the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, in which 1200 people were killed and a further 250 were taken hostage.

“From that point onwards I felt as though antisemitism was being allowed to come into the open.

“That was completely unprecedented. All of a sudden it was socially, morally acceptable for antisemitic comments to be made in public.”

Sheina Gutnick has told the commission that her parents met on Bondi Beach as “young refugees from the USSR”.

“Bondi [now] holds many complicated and conflicting feelings for me,” Gutnick said. “It was somewhere where my parents had started their history together, somewhere I had spent many days in my childhood and had beautiful memories there with my family.

“And now Bondi holds a really, really heavy weight in our community’s heart.”

Gutnick said since the October 7 attacks she had “witnessed cars driving past on main roads with passengers shouting ‘free Palestine’ followed immediately by ‘f--- the Jews’.”

“This is not political expression but explicit, targeted hatred and designed to intimidate.”