{"id":882269,"date":"2026-01-01T02:23:14","date_gmt":"2026-01-01T08:23:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/01\/in-the-wake-of-australias-hanukkah-beach-massacre\/"},"modified":"2026-01-01T02:23:14","modified_gmt":"2026-01-01T08:23:14","slug":"in-the-wake-of-australias-hanukkah-beach-massacre","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/2026\/01\/01\/in-the-wake-of-australias-hanukkah-beach-massacre\/","title":{"rendered":"In the Wake of Australia\u2019s Hanukkah Beach Massacre"},"content":{"rendered":"
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On Sunday, two gunmen killed at least fifteen people at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, in an attack that targeted the country\u2019s Jewish community as it began its celebration of Hanukkah. At least forty more were wounded. The gunmen were father and son; the younger man is in custody and in critical condition, and the older man was killed. The gathering at Bondi Beach had been organized by Chabad, a branch of Orthodox Judaism that holds cultural and religious events around the world. Australia, like a number of countries, has seen a rise in antisemitic incidents in recent years, particularly since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks<\/a>, and the ensuing war in Gaza.<\/p>\n

I spoke by phone on Sunday with Michael Visontay, the commissioning editor of the Jewish Independent<\/em>, which is based in Australia, and the author of the book \u201cNoble Fragments<\/a>.\u201d Our conversation about the attack, the history of the Australian Jewish community, and the rise of antisemitism in Australia, is below.<\/p>\n

I read this morning that Australia had a higher proportion of Holocaust survivors than any other country except Israel. What can you tell us about the Jewish community in Australia?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That\u2019s absolutely true, and it is central to the identity and the ethos of the Jewish community in Australia, because it means that, as the generations have gone on, the sensibility and the sensitivity within the community to the threats of antisemitism, of prejudice, and of the echoes of the Holocaust from the Second World War, are much more pronounced here than they are virtually anywhere else. In America, there is a much more diverse array of Jews and of affiliations\u2014there\u2019s a large contingent of Reform Jews, and Jews of all sorts of different backgrounds. Whereas, in Australia, we are largely Holocaust-survivor stock, my own family included, and that has shaped our cultural and religious antennas very, very strongly.<\/p>\n

Melbourne has the biggest community, bigger than in Sydney. Melbourne\u2019s Jewish community is largely Polish, and more insular and inward-looking than the Sydney population, which has a lot more Hungarian Jews, which is my own background. The Hungarian Jewish community was\u2014I don\u2019t know if \u201cintegrated\u201d is the right word, but slightly more secular or outward-looking. There are parts of Melbourne where you could think you were in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. There\u2019s lots and lots of ultra-Orthodox Jews down in Melbourne.<\/p>\n

You said that many Australian Jews come from families that survived the Holocaust, and that that has had a profound effect on the Jewish community there. Can you talk more about that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Well, there are not necessarily pronounced religious components, and I am not sure you would call the community conservative, but certainly it is much more responsive to changes in society. The community-leadership groups are very outspoken, pressing for more legal and regulatory responses to racial vilification and religious vilification. And there\u2019s been a history of even low-level incidents of antisemitism getting very strong responses from the Jewish community. And that\u2019s not necessarily a bad thing. There\u2019s a very strong underlying ethos that we\u2019ve always got to be very, very vigilant about antisemitism. Personally, I felt, as I was growing up in Australia, that this was perhaps being overstated and a bit of crying wolf. But after October 7th I felt that I was mistaken and proved wrong.<\/p>\n

I read that antisemitic incidents in Australia were already starting to tick up in the years prior to October 7th, but that they got much worse after October 7th. Is that accurate?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. So, after October 7th, there was an eruption, really, of anti-Jewish and anti-Israeli sentiment and behavior. It was both low-level and individual, but also expressed at sort of societal levels, with marches by pro-Palestinian groups into Jewish suburbs, and an indifference to Jewish solidarity with what had happened to Israel. There were a couple of particular incidents that I think really made a difference to people here. The first was on October 9th, after the New South Wales government lit up the Sydney Opera House with the colors of the Israeli flag, in solidarity\u2014there was a pro-Palestinian march that took place, which ended up going to the opera house. Some of them seemed to shout, \u201cGas the Jews,\u201d which was then subject to a police investigation to corroborate whether they actually said it. According to expert analysis, some people actually said, \u201cWhere\u2019s the Jews?,\u201d which, in a sense, was even worse. I\u2019ve never heard that expression. Anyway, that sent a message of hostility, and made people feel that they were a target.<\/p>\n

And there were other incidents, too. There was just this great outpouring of hostility, which was felt very strongly by the community. And then there were all sorts of incidents that became higher profile, particularly in the past six to twelve months, with firebombings of synagogues, attacks on Jewish property, and so on. And some of those were shown to have been sponsored by Iran. [The Australian government claimed that Iran was behind attacks, last year, on a kosher deli and on a synagogue. Iran denied the accusation, and Australia expelled the Iranian Ambassador<\/em>.] A climate of fear and anxiety had been sown by all of these incidents.<\/p>\n

I\u2019ve read some of your past work, and I know you\u2019re someone who believes that criticism of Israel, which you have lodged yourself, is not in itself antisemitic, even if sometimes criticism of Israel does take an antisemitic form. And I know the Israeli government has said that the Australian government\u2019s recognition of a Palestinian state is part of what caused these incidents. What did you make of the Israeli government\u2019s criticism?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Benjamin Netanyahu\u2019s attacks were just sort of a predictable lash-out, trying to, I guess, denigrate the Australian government because it had recognized Palestinian statehood. And my personal view is that the Australian government had done that as a result of the reports of starvation in Gaza earlier this year, and a number of other countries were doing the same at the time. I think the recognition was probably premature and not necessarily helpful, but I think that was the reason it occurred when it did. That is what triggered Netanyahu to lash out at the Australian government and accuse it of fostering antisemitism\u2014a connection that was tenuous at best.<\/p>\n

In terms of criticizing the Israeli government, there\u2019s still a place for it, and it needs to be done when it is appropriate, but it has become very difficult for people, certainly for Jewish people, to receive and digest legitimate criticism on its merit, because there\u2019s been so much toxic bile levelled at Jews and Israelis. It\u2019s become almost impossible to separate the arguments of legitimate criticism from the toxic messaging. And so many Jews have not seen the criticism as legitimate because they\u2019ve got this view of, \u201cWell, they just hate us, and this criticism is indistinguishable from hatred.\u201d That is really one of the biggest casualties of what\u2019s happened. The Israeli government needs to be called out for its bad behavior and policy and the things it says and does, but that criticism needs to be expressed in very precise terms. And, nevertheless, even when that does happen, many people just can\u2019t accept it. And that\u2019s very unfortunate because we need to be able to speak what\u2019s on our minds fairly and precisely and not in a malicious way.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

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So you feel that there are people in the Jewish community who will respond to any, even very precise, criticism of Israel as antisemitic. And that, at the same time, when any sort of anger at what the Israeli state is doing erupts on a large scale, there is going to be significant antisemitism.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yeah. Look, one of the sort of fault lines here is Zionism. There has arisen a sort of default way of attacking Jews for their affiliation and their belief in Zionism as a nationalist movement. When people say that these are criticisms of Israel, but not of Jews, and that Jews are conflating one with the other\u2014the way that Zionism is being weaponized, certainly in Australia, has made it very hard for a measured response.<\/p>\n

What would be an example of how Zionism has been weaponized?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Most people know that most Jews in Australia are Zionist, and that springs from the Holocaust-survivor background. A lot of the discourse, certainly on the left and on social media, has been to attack the legitimacy of Zionism as a nationalist movement and to question it and to call Zionism a colonial settler movement, and Israel a colonial settler state, and therefore question its legitimacy and right to exist. And so because Israel is a Jewish homeland, and that\u2019s how it\u2019s seen by the vast majority of Jews in Australia, this has become a fault line where criticism of Israel then bleeds into attacks on the identity and feelings of the Jews who live here. This has been further exacerbated by Zionism becoming a code word. So the word \u201cZio\u201d has been used and spread by people who want to vilify Zionists. And when it\u2019s said like that, this is not legitimate political discourse but vilification and demonization of anybody who\u2019s a Zionist. It\u2019s become very heated and very ugly.<\/p>\n

I know you feel criticisms of Zionism can be acceptable, but you feel that here, in many cases, it is being done with malicious intent?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. The questioning of Israel\u2019s legitimacy as a state that should exist as it does has become a widespread subject, not in respectable media but on social media and in blogging and in the online world, which of course affects a lot of people.<\/p>\n

And do you think this has more to do with the way these criticisms of Zionism are lodged than the criticism itself?<\/strong><\/p>\n

That context is important. And the way that the word has then become just sort of a grenade. And I guess also the fact that the questioning of Israel\u2019s right to exist has not been raised in the context of other states that have been accused of transgressions.<\/p>\n

And so your feeling is that because it\u2019s raised so much about Israel, that that\u2019s a sign of the intent of the people raising it?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes.<\/p>\n

I think that there are all kinds of reasons that people specify Israel. But one of those reasons is obviously antisemitism.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Yes. Even if not the only one.<\/p>\n

Do you think the Australian government has done enough to protect Jews in the past couple of years? Jewish people in Australia have been speaking out about feeling unsafe. It\u2019s clear that they were right to feel unsafe, as today proved, but you never know when people are criticizing the government for not doing enough if that is actually valid. What has been your opinion?<\/strong><\/p>\n

Look, I think generally their response has been adequate. They could possibly have done more and sent stronger messaging earlier. But I think part of the issue in Australia is not just what they\u2019ve done in terms of legislation and political leadership to protect Jews but the messaging on the other side, so to speak. There\u2019s a considerable Muslim community who\u2019ve been very concerned by what\u2019s happened in Gaza and by what the Israeli government and I.D.F. have done in Gaza. And so the government has been very concerned with acknowledging the pain and distress felt by Muslim and Palestinian communities whilst acknowledging the insecurity and attacks that have been visited on the Jewish community. And that has been interpreted by a lot of people, of Jews, as being not sufficiently protective of the Jewish community.<\/p>\n

And part of that from the Jewish community is the fact that wrapped up within the Palestinian cause is Hamas. And so while many Jews support Palestinian statehood and a two-state solution and feel for the terrible loss of life of Palestinians, the lack of disavowing Hamas in some rallies has led Jews to see support for Palestinians as being somehow tacitly turning a blind eye to Hamas and what Hamas did on October 7th. And sometimes it just felt like the support for the Jewish community was not wholehearted, and that the government could have responded faster and more strongly. But I don\u2019t think it makes the government culpable. \u2666<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Isaac Chotiner
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On Sunday, two gunmen killed at least fifteen people at Bondi Beach, in Sydney, Australia, in an attack that targeted the country\u2019s Jewish community as it began its celebration of Hanukkah. At least forty more were wounded. The gunmen were father and son; the younger man is in custody and in critical condition, and the<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":882270,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28635,27679],"tags":[17296,117215],"class_list":{"0":"post-882269","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australias","8":"category-hanukkah","9":"tag-australias","10":"tag-hanukkah"},"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882269","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=882269"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/882269\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/882270"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=882269"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=882269"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsycanuse.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=882269"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}