Australia’s Jewish community warned us for two years. They are furious to be proved right

2 months ago 5

Now 15 people have been murdered, including a 10-year-old girl, killed by gunmen at a Bondi Beach Hanukkah celebration in what is being investigated as the worst mass casualty terrorist attack on Australian soil.

So when Jewish leaders met at the Caulfield Hebrew Congregation in Melbourne the morning after the attack, their grief was laced with a white-hot fury.

“I was shocked at the level of anger within the community,” said Jeremy Leibler, president of the Zionist Federation of Australia.

“When we talk about who is to blame for this horrific attack, it is very clear that blame sits with the perpetrators, and if there were people who sent them or financed them, those individuals or groups. But, one cannot ignore the atmosphere and the environment that allowed the demonisation, hatred and antisemitism to flourish in the lead up to this attack.

“Governments and leaders do bear responsibility.”

Palestinian supporters marching to the Sydney Opera House in 2023 after the October 7 attack on Israel.

He summarised our political failure as “moral confusion” – a misunderstanding of Israel’s place in the world, the war it is fighting against Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran, and the one being waged in Australia over what sort of country we want to be.

Liora Miller, vice-president of the National Council of Jewish Women of Australia, described an ecosystem of hate that has been allowed to fester. “We have seen protests around the country, week after week, for two years, with chants of ‘Globalise the intifada’ and ‘From the river to the sea’. This is what that looks like.”

Daniel Rabin, senior rabbi at the Caulfield Shule, said that when he first came to Australia as a student, the place was like a Jewish la la land – a modern, pluralistic community seemingly free of antisemitism where Jews were warmly welcomed into nearly all parts of society. He said that as a Zionist, he has now been called a terrorist and a pig and told he deserves to die.

“How is that allowed?” he asked. “Is it OK for people to harm me because I believe in a Jewish homeland? Something has gone wrong.

“To know that a family today is mourning and grieving their 10-year-old because of a hatred that has been allowed to spread in our country is inexcusable. I was hoping that when we had the firebombing of the synagogues that would be a turning point. This has to be a turning point for all of us.”

A hate that has been allowed to fester, allowed to spread.

This is the principal charge against Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, Foreign Minister Penny Wong, state leaders in Victoria and NSW, vice-chancellors of universities, which for weeks indulged encampments, and the leaders of unions and cultural institutions unable to call out bigotry within their own ranks.

It is a charge forcefully put by the Coalition, which is in opposition in Canberra and in NSW and Victoria, the two states where nearly all Australian Jews live.

James Paterson, a Liberal senator with strong ties to the Jewish community, said just as the Port Arthur massacre changed Australia forever, so must the Bondi terrorist attack.

“A 10-year-old child has been murdered. A rabbi has been murdered. Someone who survived the Holocaust, who survived Nazi Germany, who made their home here in Australia, has been murdered,” Paterson said. “And the Jewish community is outraged that their warnings have not been heeded, that actions have not followed the many platitudes that we have heard over the last two years.

“Our prime minister, our premiers, our governments must stand up and they must lead.”

Josh Frydenberg, the former Morrison government treasurer weighing a return to federal politics, said the Bondi murders were all too predictable.

“Why didn’t our leaders listen and why didn’t they act? The massacre we have seen at one of our nation’s most iconic landmarks is the culmination of an unprecedented failure of leadership.”

Paterson and Frydenberg open themselves to accusations of politicising a tragic event. Yet, much the same case is being made by people who want Albanese and his government to succeed.

Federal Labor MP Josh Burns, whose electorate takes in some of Australia’s most Jewish neighbourhoods, met with Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan and Victoria Police Chief Commissioner Mike Bush on Monday morning as the names of the Bondi victims were starting to reach Jewish families in Sydney and Melbourne.

Victorian Premier Jacinta Allan visits St Kilda in inner Melbourne in the wake of the terror attack in Bondi.

Sitting on the steps of the St Kilda Shule, he reflected that for decades after the Holocaust, Australia was seen as a Jewish haven, an antidote to the ancient hatred, pogroms and death of Europe.

“It was the opportunity for Jewish people to express their faith freely and without fear,” Burns said. “Today, in Australia in 2025, you can’t go to a Jewish community institution without walking through security gates, you can’t go to a Jewish school without seeing guards out the front.

“This did not happen out of the blue. This is something that, unfortunately, has been building in Australia for years. In the worst possible way, the nightmare of what we always feared has happened.”

He said that, in order of urgency, Jews must be kept safe throughout the rest of Hanukkah and an investigation must determine not just who carried out the Bondi attack but any foreign influence or domestic intelligence failures that contributed to it.

“It cannot stop there,” he cautioned. “The really important job for the vast majority of people and especially community leadership, is to tackle this in a cultural sense head on.”

This is what Jillian Segal’s report implored Australia to do when it was published in July. It squarely pointed the finger at our universities, schools, media, artists and cultural organisations for allowing antisemitism to become “ingrained and normalised”.

It recommended changes to school curriculums to address ignorance about Jewish history, the Holocaust and the founding of Israel, and regulation of universities to make them more accountable for antisemitism in academia. It also urged the federal government to start screening prospective immigrants for hatred of Jews.

The Albanese government is still framing its response but two sources familiar with its thinking said this is likely to involve changes to high school curriculums and greater expectations on universities, of which the government is the principal funder.

Segal said it is self-evident, when we see hate speech morph into hateful action and mass murder, that as a community, we haven’t done enough.

“Blame is not a very useful sentiment,” she said. “What we need to do now is all take responsibility to work together and accelerate the plan.

“Attacking the Jews is the first stage of attacking democracy and attacking other communities. This is about the future of the country and social cohesion and our way of life. If you can’t gather on Bondi Beach to celebrate a festival where light shines over darkness, that is a great tragedy for the Australian nation.”

At Melbourne’s Federation Square on Monday night, Rabbi Gabi Kaltmann lit a menorah candle for Hanukkah in what he described as a gesture of solidarity and defiance. He reflected that for two years, his community has been telling the government loudly and forcefully that it doesn’t feel safe.

“This is now a whole different Australia,” he said. “The innocence had been broken. Now it has shattered.”