In the Media

The Australian – 16 December 2025

Like the rest of the Australian Jewish community, the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council is only at the beginning of trying to process the horror of what happened at Bondi on Sunday. It was all our worst nightmares coming true – and the grief is currently very raw and real and profound.

Everyone in the Australian Jewish community will be directly affected by these acts of terror and mass murder. Among AIJAC’s small staff, one individual was injured in the attacks – incoming Sydney office head Arsen Ostrovsky – while another staff member lost a cousin among the 15 dead.

Like the rest of our community, we are currently seeking to remember and honour the innocent victims, comfort their families, and offer all possible support to the injured.

However, even as we struggle to understand and come to terms with what happened, one thing we do know is that this event must represent a transformational watershed in Australia’s approach to the scourge of anti-Semitism that has plagued our country for over two years.

If it does not, this will raise very serious concerns about the future of Australia as a tolerant, multicultural liberal democracy, and the will of our political leaders to do what is necessary to preserve the vibrant Australian society we love and celebrate.

What happened at Bondi on Sunday, combined with other events before that, will inevitably call into question for many whether an openly Jewish life in Australia will remain possible at all.

Our synagogues, schools and other communal institutions already have to constantly be maintained under tight security, often with armed guards. And still we have had numerous attacks on synagogues in the past two years, including, most infamously, the destruction of the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne last year, and the targeting of restaurants, a daycare centre and schools. And it now appears we cannot even have a communal holiday event at one of Australia’s most iconic places without inviting mass slaughter.

Meanwhile, over the past two years, many Jews have felt it was unsafe to be visibly Jewish in our city centres every weekend when they were taken over by hostile crowds, often chanting slogans such as “globalise the intifada” or “All Zionists are terrorists.” And the response of our security forces has often appeared to be to tell Jews to “move on” for their own safety, rather than protect them from those who might harm them.

Our community is resilient and courageous, but if Australian Jews cannot be safe in our communal institutions, even under extensive security arrangements, and we cannot hold outdoor communal events, and we often cannot openly walk the streets of our cities in safety, many will understandably ask: “What kind of Jewish life is possible in this country?”

The Prime Minister, the Opposition Leader and state premiers have all been making appropriate and comforting statements in the wake of the Bondi tragedy, and for this we thank them. But in doing so, can we plead with them yet again for more urgent action, as the viability of open Australian Jewish life here becomes more and more precarious?

The federal government has failed to even respond to the recommendations of its own anti-Semitism envoy, delivered back in July. State governments have made commitments related to new laws to control the protests, then delayed implementing them or ended up watering them down. With respect, Bondi shows that governments have not approached the anti-Semitism crisis with sufficient urgency or seriousness.

After Bondi, we plead for this to change. As this terrible massacre lays bare, the alternatives are too terrible to contemplate.

Mark Leibler is national chairman of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council. Paul Rubenstein is NSW chairman of AIJAC.