‘The inevitable has happened’: Bondi beach attack follows rise in antisemitic incidents | Bondi beach terror attack
Shortly after Sunday’s mass attack on Australia’s Jewish community, Rabbi Levi Wolff of the Central Sydney Synagogue told reporters that “the inevitable has now happened.”
Wolff was speaking in Bondi, near where two men armed with high-powered rifles or shotguns attacked an event celebrating the Jewish religious holiday Chanukah. At least 12 people, including an alleged gunman, were killed and dozens more injured in Australia’s deadliest mass shooting in almost three decades.
His words will resonate with representatives of the Jewish community in Australia and around the world, who are warning policymakers of the clear and present danger of such an attack.
Experts note that anti-Semitism was widespread before the bloody conflict in Gaza, provoked by Hamas’ attack on Israel in October 2023, and that views were polarized around the world.
For example, the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the United States occurred in 2018; In 2023, Michael O’Flaherty, director of the EU’s fundamental rights office, described such hatred as “a deeply rooted racism in European society” that poses an existential threat to the continent’s Jewish community.
But there is no doubt that these trends have intensified dramatically due to the conflict in the Middle East.
in the USA, Anti-Defamation League reported 9,354 anti-Semitic incidents in 2024; this was the highest number since records began in 1979. For the first time, the majority “included elements related to Israel or Zionism”.
Community Safety Foundation 4,296 samples recorded Anti-Semitic hatred has increased across the UK in 2023 – double the previous year – and is the largest ever documented. There were 3,528 in 2024; this was the second highest annual total.
In Australia, the Executive Council of Australian Jews (ECAJ) recorded 1,654 anti-Semitic incidents in the 12 months to 30 September; this was nearly three times the annual total before the war in Gaza. In a report Earlier this month, ECAJ said anti-Semitic racism had remained on the margins of society and had become part of the mainstream, “with a growing ideological alignment among neo-Nazis, the anti-Israel Left or Islamists.”
Terrorism experts know that radicalization does not occur in a vacuum. Such violence remains a social activity that reflects broader trends. This means that even relatively minor incidents of race hatred (hateful graffiti, racial slurs on the street, and so on) point to something deeper and more dangerous.
The telescopic sights used by the Bondi attackers made each of their victims clearly visible as they talked, laughed, looked at children, greeted friends, hugged relatives in one of the most joyful events on the Jewish religious calendar.
Pulling the trigger could have come at the end of a process of dehumanization that began long before swastikas were painted on the walls of synagogues or schoolchildren were insulted at the bus stop.
Security officials have been warning for some time that the conflict in Gaza was fueling a wave of extreme radicalization in the Islamic world and beyond. Last year, then-US Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines in question The war “will have a generational impact on terrorism.”
The latest report from the U.N. committee that oversees sanctions against members of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State said the “Gaza and Israel conflict” still features prominently in terrorist propaganda and that “several alleged terrorist attack plans exist in the United States, largely motivated by the Gaza and Israel conflict or by individuals inspired and radicalized by ISIS (Daesh).”
This will be the main focus of researchers.
There have been some suggestions that Iran may also be responsible, having appeared responsible for instigating some previous anti-Semitic attacks in Australia. However, this would represent a dramatic escalation and departure from the tactics Iranian agents have used recently, which is unlikely.
British authorities are sharing information with their Australian counterparts through the Five Eyes security alliance and are likely to have also conveyed their concerns about violence targeting Jewish communities following recent events in the UK. Jihad al-Shamie, 35, reportedly pledged allegiance to ISIS before attacking a synagogue in Manchester during the Jewish Yom Kippur festival in October, killing two people.
In the aftermath, Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP) published a new call to arms in an online magazine distributed via social media, urging Muslims in the west to follow Al Shami’s example.
AQAP, which has significant propaganda reach and international ambitions, called for further violence against Jewish communities and offered detailed advice to attackers from its “Lone Jihad Guidance Team.”
An unconfirmed report from a witness that the killers in Sydney were carrying “a black flag with an insignia on it” will be of interest to investigators as it could indicate allegiance to ISIS. But so far there is no evidence that the organization has any connection to Sunday’s horrific events.
For now there is only the feeling that a tragedy has been foretold.
“This is the Jewish community’s worst fears,” ECAJ co-CEO Alex Ryvchin told Sky News. “It’s been bubbling under the surface for a long time, and now it’s actually happened.”
