In the Media

Mamamia – 15 December 2025

There’s something I want to tell you, and I can’t stop the tears as I write, so please bear with me…

I am just like you.

I don’t function without coffee first thing in the morning.

I never quite exercise enough.

My heart explodes when I spoon my dog.

I spend more than I mean to on makeup.

I have no self-control around pasta.

And there is truly nothing better than a cuddle from my mum.

I love my family. But right now, we are suffering.

Not just my inner circle — my Jewish family in Australia. Around the world.

Yesterday, two gunmen opened fire in a terror attack on a Jewish community gathering on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, as families came together to celebrate Chanukah.

Fifteen innocent souls were killed.

The elderly, who had no time to flee.

A child – a 10-year-old girl.

Alex Kleytman, who survived the horrors of Siberia during the Holocaust, only to be murdered here, in Australia, on a beach in 2025.

A beloved rabbi.

Dozens more were injured.

They were targeted for one reason only: they were Jewish.

This doesn’t just feel personal. It is personal.

We are a small community in Australia, just 120,000. What does that look like? A chocka-block MCG, with people standing on the ground too.

So, every Jewish Australian knows someone affected.

Just two weeks ago, I shared a meal with a colleague and friend, international human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky — a survivor of October 7, who had just moved to Australia to help fight antisemitism here.

Yesterday, his photograph appeared in my social media feed: his head soaked in blood after being grazed by a bullet while attending the Bondi Chanukah celebrations with his wife and children.

A former journalist colleague of mine was also wounded.

Yes, we are in shock – so much shock.

But surprised? Not really.

As a journalist, I’ve spent nearly a decade reporting on antisemitism, warning about its steady, insidious rise in Australia. I wrote about it in 2022 – about how Jews instinctively scan for exits when entering synagogues, schools and communal spaces.

What’s the fastest way out if we have to run?

And then October 7, 2023, happened.

Just two days after Hamas terrorists slaughtered 1,200 innocent Israelis — dancing at a music festival, sleeping in their homes — the greatest loss of Jewish life since the Holocaust, hundreds gathered on the steps of the Sydney Opera House chanting, “Where are the Jews?” and “F*** the Jews.”

In Sydney’s west, preachers celebrated the massacre as fireworks lit the sky.

Since then, bomb threats have targeted synagogues.

Jewish schools and businesses have been defaced with hate.

Jewish creatives have been doxxed.

“What is happening to our beautiful Australia?” we asked, again and again.

Jewish-owned buildings and cars were torched.

A Jewish childcare centre was firebombed.

Jewish schoolchildren vilified.

Melbourne’s Central Synagogue was forced into lockdown as violent protests erupted outside.

East Melbourne Synagogue had its doors set alight on Shabbat, as worshippers sat inside sharing a meal. Universities and city streets became hotbeds of hate.

And almost exactly one year ago, Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue was targeted in an arson terror attack — five minutes from where my head rested on my pillow.

And after every incident, the Jewish community raised its voice, each time with a little more desperation, more frustration.

We knew where this road leads. History has taught us, again and again.

But the hate was allowed to fester. To be normalised. And bigots became emboldened.

All while we were dismissed, minimised and gaslit.

“It’s not as bad as Europe.”

“It will die down.”

“Anti-Zionism isn’t the same as antisemitism.”

We were offered empty words from so-called leaders who claimed to “stand with us,” who virtue-signalled with appointments and statements — without implementing real, meaningful action, or even one recommendation from the newly-appointed Antisemitism Envoy.

But do us a favour. Please don’t “stand with us”. Do something!

“What will it take?” we loudly asked. “A dead Jew, God forbid?”

Now we have fifteen.

And for the record: the gunmen did not ask who in the crowd was a Zionist.

Leaders did not lead. Governments did not govern. Police were not enabled with the powers to effectively police.

And we are devastated. Angry. Exhausted. Betrayed. Determined. Sick, in the base of our stomachs.

Because it wasn’t only our leaders who ignored us.

It was many of our friends and colleagues too — the same people I stood beside when we posted in solidarity with #MeToo, #BlackLivesMatter, the Chibok girls, and the fight against gender-based violence.

But when it came to increasingly violent Jewish hatred.

Silence.

Or worse — selective compassion. Even now, some speak vaguely of the “Bondi community.”

No. This was a targeted antisemitic terror attack against Jews.

If we erase antisemitism from the narrative, we enable it.

You cannot treat a sickness without first diagnosing it.

And let me be clear:

This was never about Israel versus Palestine.

As someone who has visited the frontlines of the Israel-Gaza war, who has spoken to countless Israelis and Palestinians, I want nothing more than genuine, lasting peace with our Palestinian cousins.

But this is something far bigger.

This is what it means to ‘Globalise the Intifada’, as extremist Islamist ideology is allowed to be exported.

Last year, Muslim-Emirati political analyst Amjad Taha warned me that antisemitism must be treated as a crime, not an opinion.

“We know this literature,” he said. “We have families who suffered from this language of hate.”

This is a battle for the fundamentals of liberal democracy – for the freedoms that allow us to choose our religion, our relationships, the right to education, to work, what we wear, how we live.

The freedom to dance at a music festival.

Or to gather in a park to celebrate with the Jewish and wider community.

To choose life over hate.

This is the Australia we know and love.

A safe haven from persecution and famine. A new start. A place to live in peace and make a good life for your family.

It’s the very fabric of the immigrant story on which this country was built, a story to which the Jewish community has also contributed, too.

Those values were embodied yesterday by Ahmed Al-Ahmed, the bystander hero who risked his life to tackle and disarm one of the terrorists, before being shot himself.

He understood the threat.

So did my friend Omar, originally from Gaza, now living in Europe. He was among the first to message me last night:

“What happened today saddens me! I stand with my Jewish brothers and I reject this terrorism.”

I know many of you feel exactly the same.

But please — say it. Loudly.

Demand real action from our leaders — not just while this tragedy dominates headlines.

Show solidarity publicly. Make antisemitism reprehensible. Intolerable. It’s how homophobic and other racist sentiment changed.

Reach out to Jewish people you know — or don’t.

Because Jews are the ‘canaries in the coal mine’. It never ends with us.

Do not let hate and terror dictate the future of this country — for you, your children, and your grandchildren.

The festival of Chanukah is joyous, despite remembering the antisemitism of the ancient world. It renews our faith in light and goodness over evil, reminding us that even the smallest flicker of light can pierce a vast sea of darkness.

Please. Be that flicker now.

Don’t let their deaths be in vain.

Rebecca Davis is a journalist, writer and Digital Media Editor at Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC).