Jews had gathered on Bondi Beach to celebrate the first night of Chanukah, the festival of light and freedom. Uniquely among Jewish festivals, Chanukah is celebrated in public. Generations of families came to light candles on Sydney’s famous coastline and say: we belong here too. And then two gunmen opened fire: 15 people murdered; 40 wounded. The victims include London born Rabbi Eli Schlanger and Alex Kleytman, who survived the Holocaust but, 80 years later was murdered for being a Jew.
On Bondi Beach, Jews celebrating that freedom were attacked and murdered.
This was not ‘senseless violence’ – the very phrase stupefies us into passivity, unable to name, identify and deal with the specific hatred behind it. This was a calculated attack on Jews celebrating a festival that commemorates our refusal to be erased from the public square, our determination to spread light in the face of darkness and maintain freedom despite tyranny.
The bitter truth, however, is that in 2025, Jews in the Diaspora are no longer free, but shackled by antisemitism. Our children learn lessons no child should: where the exits are, what to do if the glass breaks. We worship behind bulletproof doors and bombproof windows after passing through security guards not because we want to, but because we must. We are sick of explaining this, having our concerns dismissed or minimised and having to go through the same tiresome process after each and every outrage.
It cannot be only our problem. If a society’s Jews aren’t free neither is that society.
But we refuse to give in to the relentless campaign to intimidate and erase us. The message is constant: you live here on sufferance. You may be tolerated, but only if you are invisible. When Jews venture out publicly we are targeted by hostility that too many have normalised.
We have warned that where Jew-hatred is normalised, anti-Jewish violence is inevitable. The so-called ‘pro-Palestine’ marches week after week have been recruiting grounds for those who carry out violence and those who justify it. Hate-filled demonstrations outside synagogues precede bullets through their doors. Calls for murder outside opera houses precede murders on beaches.
Washington DC, Colorado, Manchester, Bondi. Where next?
On the streets of London, Manchester, Sydney, New York and Paris mobs have chanted for violence, glorified terror and demonised Jews with language that would be instantly recognised as incitement if used against any other minority. Jewish students harassed, Jewish businesses vandalised, Jewish events cancelled after being deemed ‘too difficult’ to protect.
We need more than perfunctory condemnation when the drumbeat of hate predictably leads to bloodshed. We need action.
Democracies must allow protest but the language and actions of protests matter. Protests that undermine the rights of others to exist safely are not legitimate dissent but calls for violence.
Who will stand up instead of standing by? We don’t ask that everyone be like Ahmed al Ahmed, the heroic onlooker who with breathtaking courage disarmed one of the shooters and is now recovering in hospital. We do, however, expect those who can act to do so – from government, to police, to music venues, universities and broadcasters.
The authorities and wider public must make clear that it is the antisemites and not the Jews who will be erased from public spaces.
First, call it what it is: antisemitism. Not ‘community tension’, not ‘imported conflict’. Jew-hatred, adapted for modern tastes, laundered through modern slogans, and unleashed on Jews. Saying death to Zionists it is not just violent language but antisemitic. Recognise that saying death to the ‘Zionist entity’ means death to the Jews – the outcomes are indistinguishable.
Second, draw red lines and enforce them. Protect protest, of course, but reject incitement and intimidation. If a march, a concert or public event calls for violence, glorifies Jew-killing terrorist groups, uses antisemitic imagery or vilifies a minority community it is not a protest for democratic rights but a threat to them and should result in arrests and prosecutions far more often.
Who will stand up instead of standing by?
Third, stop indulging and making excuses for Jew-hate because confronting it is inconvenient. Stop the backdoor boycott of ‘safety concerns’ whether at comedy venues or European football matches. If Jews aren’t safe, neither are you.
Finally: choose solidarity that costs something. Not boilerplate statements but the solidarity that shows up – at vigils, schools, synagogues – in daylight, openly, without fear or equivocation.
We get to this point when the majority are silent in the face of evil. Jews are all too aware of those who hate us but it is the bystanders who send a shiver down our spine: universities too cowardly to condemn antisemitic incitement; media companies who platform terrorist apologists; sporting bodies whose response to murdered Jews is pathetic; police turning a blind eye to or failing to recognise virulently antisemitic chants; the friends and colleagues with something to say about everything but nothing to say about this.
And here is perhaps the most pernicious idea of all: that some people possess a unique pain that allows them to disrupt society and deprive Jews of basic freedoms. Freedom of association. Freedom to walk the streets without fear. Freedom to practise their religion. Freedom to have a connection to the only Jewish country on earth without vilification. Freedom simply to be.
The lights of Chanukah are not lights of naïveté, but of resolve. The Maccabees pushed back against a powerful empire because it sought to erase their freedom and identity. On Bondi Beach, Jews celebrating that freedom were attacked and murdered.
Our societies must now decide whether we mean it when we say ‘never again’. And history will record who stood up, and who stood by.
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