How Australia responded to terror and fear

What changed after the Bondi terrorist attack on Sunday, December 14?

Dr Lee Duffield followed the events and wrote this report on how Australians received the bad news in the first hours.

Seen through the bombardment of the mainstream media and first responders, that night revealed the national determination to protect the victims; This time, the Jewish community aimed to hold an outdoor celebration in 1935. Hanukkah.

This may not be enough for the Jewish people, who fear that the conflict in the Middle East will come to Australia and be attacked repeatedly.

A “wave of antisemitism”?

The concept of a “wave of antisemitism” sweeping the country was immediately qualified by leaders, especially the Prime Minister. Anthony AlbaneseWHO said Jewish Australians, ‘we are with you’.

“An attack on Australian Jews is an attack on all Australians.” Albanian in question.

However, the occupation of Bondi, which has a strong Jewish community, was foretold. There is anti-Semitic graffiti on the streets often enough. Past periods of tension have seen convoys of cars patrolling neighboring suburbs menacingly forced to be chased by police.

Any “waves” are coming from Islamist groups or individuals in other parts of the city, currently focused on the Israeli bombardment of Gaza. Objectors will be identified in situations where they are likely to have friendship and family ties with victims in Palestine. They will not see the perpetrators only as the radical-nationalist government. Benjamin Netanyahu and as Jews, not their armed forces or the state of Israel.

The terrorist’s idea is to match complaint with complaint and force recognition of their view, without being able to see how the cruelty and injustice of their actions would dispel that view.

Far-right gangs were active enough after the shooting that people asked whether a group of anti-Semitic Skippy-kangaroo Australians should also be considered – but not this time.

Beyond this, Australia has followed a tradition of religious tolerance; This is a place of trust rather than hatred or “waves of anti-Semitism”. There was horror in both attacks against Israeli citizens. October 7, 2023 and the mass murder and systematic impoverishment of the people of Gaza by the Israelis. The Federal Government has received support and weathered criticism for recognizing Palestine and imposing sanctions against extremists on the Israeli side.

Some Jewish organizations in Australia have been aggressive in siding with the current Israeli regime, but they have certainly not engaged in the violent actions that are currently a problem in Australia.

What is the thing to follow?

Pressure on the government will now focus on what can be done to protect Jews in Australia. Official reviews of the attack at Bondi, where the coroner is already on duty and the Police Commissioner has promised an investigation, could make a difference.

The questions will be: How much contact occurred between the police and the organizers of the Hanukkah event? How could two attackers with long firearms get onto the bridge to shoot at the crowd? Did the police there have access to appropriate weapons to engage them? Essentially, necessarily and unfortunately, the result may be the routinisation of further surveillance and the establishment of security cordons; However, this still does not mean that new protective and preventive measures will eliminate the threat.

Security service chief, ASIO, Mike BurgessHe acknowledged at the national media conference that one of the gunmen was “known” to police, one of many, but his previous activities were not enough to trigger the alarm. This is often the case with terrorists who attack suddenly; Some of the pressure on the Government now, although it may be hard to resist, will be for further action on the immigration side, to “keep them out”.

I hear from Bondi

How (if at all) was the attack on Bondi, the heart of Australia, experienced by Australians?

The mobilization of broadcast channels, primarily four television networks, provided the foundations the country needed during the crisis. Starting with the ABC, then Ten and Nine and then Seven, they each launched a channel for continuous broadcast and had it on air within 40 minutes of filming. They presented the facts to both explain and show what happened in the shooting, along with additional important information; There were eyewitness statements and the first comments came later.

The process was to assemble videos from the crisis period for replay and to place reporting people in the studios who co-ordinated resources, particularly from field reporters (with the ABC deploying several, including monitoring some hospitals) and media conferences held by the New South Wales Government and the Prime Minister’s National Security Committee in Canberra.

It was possible to find out in a few hours:

• In the attack on Hannukah, an important festival of the Jewish community at the end of the year, in Bondi, 40 people were shot by black-dressed gunmen;
• declared an act of terrorism by the police and given emergency powers;
• Twelve people were killed, including one of the gunmen, and 29 were injured, including two police officers and at least one child;
• a second gunman was also in custody and possibly seriously injured; And
• Starting at 18:47, the sequence of events lasting approximately ten minutes was assembled and shown; would continue for decades, including dramatic footage of an unarmed man grabbing one of the terrorists from behind and disarming him while an accomplice continued shooting.

The police clashed with the attackers; More arrived in force, along with the ambulance fleet, beginning a systematic operation in which protective control zones were established and disoriented crowds were allowed to leave the area in an orderly manner. Many had to leave their cars and belongings on the beach, and police announced they had found explosives in a parked car and called in the bomb squad in armored vehicles.

They also announced that they were looking for a possible third gunman, working the parking lot and checking all cars. A “law enforcement” source later told the ABC that one of the criminals was named Naveed Akram, whose home in Bonyrigg, south-west Sydney, was already being raided.

Facts, eyewitnesses, reviews

The story was filled in by eyewitnesses. An old woman told that her husband had been killed in her presence and that she was trying to find out where he had been taken; a young man went to the famous beach on his third day in Australia and saw two men shooting; One teenager said he and a friend hesitated before running because they thought the loud noise was an “exciting” firework.

In statements made late in the evening, the Governor General Samantha Mostyn and Opposition leader Susan Ley It contributed to messages of confidence and unity (at least in the case of Ley, until the next day, when criticism began that the Government had been slow to act on warnings). Two right-wing Israeli politicians have claimed they knew overnight that Australia was in the grip of a “wave of antisemitism”. He said they have received support from the entire faith community, including Jewish religious leaders, Christian and Islamic leaders.

Observations

The timely deployment of large numbers of first responders and the openness and accessibility of government leaders, security, and police were signs of a developed country, and highly organized, well-resourced, professional on-call media were crucial to this country. This has been called by one commentator (the current writer, in fact) a “generic” function of mainstream media that brings everything together in one place for everyone so that people can get the important information they need from reliable sources.

In Bondi, this was also very important for public safety. Professional journalists have a long tradition of being vilified, but serious and accountable news services have a key role to play, which is especially important in democratic politics. The main media conferences were broadcast live on Sunday night for all to see and use, distribution through the main news channels made this feasible, and the use of a relatively small group of background reporters who knew the questions to ask helped focus the conference.

What about social media?

At Bondi, social media was important in two key examples. Footage of the horrific event from hundreds of phone cameras here was captured everywhere, including mainstream channels that acknowledged their value. Several people used by Channel 9 looked very closely and got a good look at the gunmen.

Everyone who was human and curious wanted to know who did this. Were they “Islamist terrorists”, especially since it was understood that the real targets were the Jews? The sight of the two oozed a frenzy that was eerily reminiscent of the terrible realization that it was no accident when a second plane crashed into the World Trade Center in September 2001. A zoomed-in image of one of the gunmen, very clear, seemed to confirm this. The photo was published shortly before Naveed Akram was named and was broadcast on at least one television channel.

Beyond this, social media users confirmed that they quickly obtained reliable material, especially from outlets they already followed and “knew where to look.” It is possible to imagine a growing overlap between ethical practitioners both on social media and in the mainstream in the area of ​​well-tested journalistic protocols such as establishing facts and always making honest attempts at impartial justice.

An eye-catching picture may be watchable if published arbitrarily without context, it may be nice to look at for its own sake, but it only raises questions: where and who, why, what happened as a result? For all of this, just keep watching the news and “knowing where to look.”

In addition to Dr Lee Duffield’s extensive journalistic experience, he served as the ABC’s European correspondent. He is also a respected academic and member of the editorial advisory board of Pacific Journalism Review and an elected member of the University of Queensland Senate.

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