Life changed for Jews in Australia this week. Will it ever be the same?

By Hilary Whiteman, CNN

Bondi Beach, Sydney (CNN) — For Australia’s tiny Jewish population, Bondi Beach was a refuge within a vast country that offered sanctuary to families fleeing a seething hate that killed six million of their kind within the lifetime of some of their oldest members.

For decades, they laid roots in a Sydney suburb built around a white sandy beach where each year millions of tourists kick off their shoes to be transported to a postcard world of beautiful people and friendly lifesavers wearing red and yellow caps.

It’s the image Australia wants to project to the world – of a multicultural haven where the conflicts of countries thousands of miles away are left at the shoreline.

But last Sunday horror and hatred rained down onto a Bondi lawn, where 15 people were shot dead by two gunmen with six licensed firearms.

It was Australia’s worst mass shooting since a lone gunman killed 35 people in an attack on tourists in Tasmania almost 30 years ago. This time was different.

“They wanted to kill Jews,” said mourner Carole, through tears near a carpet of flowers at Bondi Pavilion, a local landmark that now marks the site of a massacre.

“All we want to do is live in peace, work hard, pay our taxes and love our fellow Australians,” said Carole, whose daughters begged her not to give her last name for fear of retaliation.

“Jewish people always feel they are the country first,” Carole said. “As well as being strong Jews, we are never just Jewish. And now that’s how we feel.”

“Australia has let us down,” she said, angrily. “It’s actually beyond belief.”

‘This country has changed’

Australia notes with pride that it has the biggest population of Holocaust survivors per capita outside of Israel. Most live in Sydney and Melbourne. Many call Bondi home.

This week, Jews in this picturesque pocket of Australia’s eastern coast buried their dead in funerals livestreamed to the diaspora worldwide.

The youngest victim, Matilda, was 10 years old. Among the flowers at Bondi Pavilion, toys and images of bees could be seen – a nod to Matilda’s middle name and the “sting” in her vibrant personality.

Dorienne Light wore an Israeli flag across her shoulders as she paid her respects at the memorial on Wednesday. Her son had handed her the flag as she walked out the door.

“I felt satisfied that the symbol wasn’t subtle – it’s who I am,” said Light, who this week has struggled to distract herself from heartache.

“This country has changed,” she said. “I used to be so proud of where we lived. We need to reclaim that.”

Do you think it’s possible? “Yes, I do.”

Under this leadership? “No.”

A community in grief directed its anger squarely at the Australian government, accusing it of allowing antisemitism to fester for two years before Sunday’s devastating attack.

Former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, a member of the opposition Liberal party, whose mother arrived in Australia as a refugee from the Holocaust, channeled deep feelings of betrayal in a speech at the memorial.

“Our prime minister, our government, has allowed Australia to be radicalized on his watch,” he said on Wednesday, surrounded by mourners and media cameras.

Two homemade ISIS flags were found in a car near the massacre site that had been fitted with improvised explosive devices that police disarmed before they caused harm.

More than a decade ago, ISIS became the latest militant group to use religious extremism to recruit disaffected supporters in the West before a US-backed operation defeated its forces in Syria in 2019.

Before Sunday’s massacre, the alleged shooters were said to have spent a month in a hotel in Mindanao in the Philippines, an area where ISIS-aligned insurgents still hold ambitions to declare an independent Islamist state.

It was a rare trip out of the country for Sajid Akram, the 50-year-old shooter shot dead by police, who left Australia just three times in the years from 2001, according to officials.

An Indian national, Akram arrived in Australia on a student visa in 1998, which was later transferred to a partner visa. His son, Naveed, an Australian citizen, now faces 59 charges, including 15 of murder and 40 of attempted murder as well as a terrorism offense.

When asked by a reporter if he could have done more to prevent Sunday’s attack, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said, “Anyone in this position would regret not doing more, and any inadequacies which are there. But what we need to do is to move forward.”

With that, he announced a tranche of tougher restrictions on hate speech, including an “aggravated hate speech” offense, along with powers for the home affairs minister to cancel visas held by hate preachers.

“We have all seen vision of hate preachers where we are shocked that that is happening in Australia,” said Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke.

“It is not representative of what people expect in Australia, and it’s certainly not representative of the Muslim community in Australia. There have been repeated checks as to whether they have crossed legal thresholds. They haven’t. The thresholds are changing.”

A minority targeted

At 6 a.m., the usual opening time, Avner’s bakery in Sydney’s Surry Hills remained closed. A sign on its doors explained that “the world has changed. Our world has changed.”

“In the wake of the pogrom at Bondi one thing has become clear. It is no longer possible to make outwardly, publicly, proudly Jewish places and events safe in Australia,” the sign read.

Known for its delicious bagels and chocolate babkas, Avner’s was a popular meeting place where customers would pull up a stool and chat on the sidewalk.

The notice said the bakery had been subject to “almost ceaseless” antisemitic attacks for two years, and they were calling it quits, for the safety of staff and customers. Owner Ed Halmagyi told The Sydney Morning Herald that feces had been thrown at the bakery’s windows and glue poured into its locks.

The owners of another local business Lox in a Box, which sells Polish bagels and burgers, woke up the day after the shootings to find a string of one-star reviews.

“While deeply upsetting, we were unfortunately not surprised,” said owners Candy Berger and Lauren Jensen in an email to CNN. “Moments like this often expose the undercurrent of antisemitism that still exists, even here in Australia.”

Carole said a common subject of conversation among local Jewish families was where they would go, if things got worse.

“We’ve had friends who’ve just left to go live in Israel. And the other plan B would be going to the US, because there are lots of places where the US is much safer,” she said. “There are a lot of Jews. They’re not such a small minority.”

Antisemitic attacks surged in the two years since Hamas’ attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, when militants terrorized Israelis in cross-border raids, killing 1,200 Israelis and taking 251 hostages.

Two days later, Australian authorities lit up the sails of the Sydney Opera House with the blue and white of the Israeli flag, as Israel ordered a “complete siege” of Gaza.

The show of support for Israel brought protesters to the steps of the Opera House, where they waved Palestinian flags and were accused of shouting anti-Jewish slurs the organizers blamed on “a tiny fringe of vile antisemitic attendees.”

At that stage, hundreds of Palestinians had been killed by Israeli strikes in Gaza.

But by August 2025, more than 60,000 Palestinians had been killed, according to the United Nations. Hundreds of starving Palestinians had been shot at aid collection points, and nearly 12,000 children were suffering from acute malnutrition. Public anger swelled in Australia, much like it did across swathes of the rest of the globe, as images of the war were streamed into digital devices.

Peace seemed further away than ever, and Australia was under pressure to break with the United States and join allies Britain, France and Canada in recognizing a Palestinian state.

In Australia, pro-Palestinian groups urged Australians to send a message to Israel by walking across Sydney Harbour Bridge – and an estimated 90,000 people turned up. New South Wales authorities had tried to ban it in the courts on safety grounds, but a judge ruled that it could go ahead.

While the protest was directly in response to the Israeli government and its war in Gaza, some Jews in Australia fear such demonstrations can lead to a spillover of hate aimed at local targets. Instances of vandalism, spray-painted slurs and other antisemitic hate language have surged in the last two years.

On Friday, the state’s Premier Chris Minns announced plans to ban protests held around terror events to prevent “intimidation, escalation and violence,” as NSW Police warned people not to attend unauthorized demonstrations this weekend.

“The truth of the matter is, we can’t risk another mass demonstration on that scale in New South Wales,” said Minns. “The implications can be seen, in my view, not just on Sunday, but anti-Jewish, antisemitic graffiti and arson attacks through our community over the last two years.”

The Australian Palestine Advocacy Network, a coalition of groups advocating for Palestinian human rights, rejected any link between anti-war protests and the Bondi terror attack.

“Conflating mass demonstrations, including the Sydney Harbour Bridge March for Humanity, with antisemitic graffiti or criminal acts is both irresponsible and misleading,” APAN President Nasser Mashni said in a statement.

“Those acts should be investigated and prosecuted on their own merits, not used to justify blanket restrictions on lawful assembly.”

The war on hate

Eradicating deep-seated hate is an exhausting, challenging process.

Matt Quinn, the founder of Exit Australia, a nonprofit working to deradicalize those with extreme hate, says it can take as long as 18 months to convince radicalized people to adopt a different view.

He agrees Australia’s hate laws haven’t been strong enough – and notes an unintended consequence of this has provided tools for recruitment for white supremacists, angry over a perceived leniency toward certain Muslim clerics preaching more extremist ideology.

White supremacists “feel like they’re being attacked, and they feel like they haven’t done anything,” Quinn said.

“They just blame the Jews for every little problem they see in their life. Anything that’s gone wrong, whether it’s a government policy or whatever, the Jews are to blame,” he said.

His advice for anyone who identifies hate within themselves or a close family member or friend is to seek help before it escalates into the unthinkable.

Sunday’s attack shocked a nation that thought its strong gun laws could prevent US-style mass shootings, and authorities quickly announced the most sweeping gun reforms since Tasmania’s Port Arthur massacre.

A massive gun buy-back – the biggest since 1996 – is expected to see hundreds of thousands of guns surrendered to authorities.

And New South Wales vowed to impose the toughest gun laws of any state with new limits on the number of guns and who can own them.

As investigations continue into the perpetrators of Sunday’s shooting, Australia has rallied around its Jewish community – seen in the dozens of messages of support now stuck to the window Avner’s bakery, the encouraging posts to Lox in a Box, in the notes on the piles of flowers, in the donations to the families of victims.

They’ve also rallied around Ahmed al Ahmed, the Muslim father who risked his life by tackling an alleged shooter and seizing the gun during Sunday’s attack.

The Australian National Imams Council said in a statement that the attack had targeted the entire community – including Muslims. “We unequivocally reject these acts and reaffirm our shared responsibility to uphold respect, safety, and dignity for all communities in Australia.”

For Australia, a country separated by sea from horrors unfolding elsewhere, the Bondi attack has delivered a disturbing reminder that no country is safe from hate.

As a tragic week ended, thousands swam and paddled on boards off the coast of Bondi as the community came together to heal. On Saturday, Bondi’s famed surf lifesavers – many who rushed to the scene as first responders – held a ceremony of remembrance on the sand.

Flags across the country will fly at half-mast on Sunday on a national day of reflection. Key buildings will be lit up in the national colors of green and gold, and lights will beam from the top of Bondi Pavilion, a nod to Hanukkah, the Jewish festival of light that families were celebrating at Bondi Beach before their world was torn apart.

Every day this week, Rabbi Yossi Friedman has attended the Bondi memorial saying out loud the names of those killed, with a tribute to each one – so that observers don’t forget who they were, and what they stood for.

“That is what happens when hate goes unchecked,” he told CNN as he stood by the flower memorial, where mourners bowed their heads in grief.

“We’re going to build a movement, a movement of light,” he said. “We’re going to show everyone, including our leadership, that we are united in this fight against hate.”

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