The Bondi Beach attack was all-too-familiar for Jewish people

Jews were murdered in cold blood in Sydney yesterday. Jews were killed in Manchester two months ago. It seems to be never ending. 

Synagogues on five continents have been burned since 7 October 2023, and despite the levels of concern, the response simply does not cut it.

A common, depressing theme in responses by Jewish communal leaders and other spokespeople to the horrific antisemitic terror attack in Manchester, was that the community had seen this coming. 

That it wasn’t unexpected, and yet Australian Jews were saying the same: ‘None of us were surprised’. 

There is no excuse now, governments can no longer say they didn’t see this coming. With two attacks in quick succession and all the warnings, words alone won’t cut it next time.

Jews know the warning signs. At times of economic and political uncertainty, populations become stressed, populists take advantage, democracy comes under threat, and Jews are the canary in the coalmine. Whether it be new educational programming, immediate deployment of counter-extremism measures, action is required. 

Before, during and after the shocking scenes on Yom Kippur in Heaton Park, my colleagues and I have been warning institutions in the UK that the level of vitriol, and a failure to moderate language and behaviours was likely to fuel radicalisation. 

The wider context has been a sustained and unrelenting rise in antisemitic incidents with the highest number ever recorded coming after the October 7 attacks two years ago.

Now that the worst has happened, yet again, it is time for all of those that we have been raising our serious concerns with to take immediate action –and go beyond warm words.

There is a great deal to do, and countless attacks prove the genie is well out of the bottle. 

Specifically, the Government needs, urgently, to deliver a strategy for tackling extremism. 

Every day young people, in particular, are being radicalised online, in their bedrooms and elsewhere. 

The Heaton Park synagogue terrorist did not wake up one day and decide to kill Jews, he was inspired by someone – and authorities need to work faster than they have done so far to find out who. 

Likewise, the fact that a father-and-son duo are suspected of carrying out the Bondi Beach attack proves that this poison is spread through generations.

The Government needs to bring the relevant experts and departments together, and commit far more resources to developing a strategy which takes in approaches to non-violent extremism. 

A response with teeth that, for example, sees religious leaders spreading hate held accountable, and one that delivers education at source to vulnerable young people. Something that builds on the Prevent strategy but learns from its failings.  

Certainly, Australian Jewish leaders have pointed to similar concerns about the Australian Government’s failures to listen to them – incitement on the streets going largely unaddressed. 

We need a whole Government and whole society approach and that means each industry, each employer, taking responsibility for addressing anti-Jewish racism. It also means the regulators that work to keep organisations and industries in check play a key role. 

The health regulator, the General Medical Council, was severely criticised by the Health Secretary, Wes Streeting, for a failure to adequately understand or address antisemitism. 

Ofcom has come under fire for its lack of ambition in tackling online harms; the Electoral Commission has a lot more to do in ensuring our elections are safe, fair, and do not see candidates or their supporters intimidating others amid heightened community tensions. 

In cultural spaces too, we are platforming too many extremists. Only recently Piers Morgan hosted American Far Right agitator Nick Fuentes who described Hitler as ‘very f***ing cool’.

Morgan is widely seen to have ‘won’ the debate, but it still made many of us uneasy to see such a nakedly bigoted figure given a high profile appearance.

I could go on, highlighting failures to act across the health, employment, cultural, educational and other spheres.

Parliament too must play its role. In recent years, MPs and peers have invoked antisemitic conspiracy theories, engaged in Holocaust inversion and joined platforms alongside antisemites.  

Whether it be a Peer making reference to supposed Jewish wealth, or an MP comparing the situation in Gaza to the Holocaust, it all adds up. 

So too, the febrile debate about the Gaza conflict has seen the spread of misinformation in the Chamber, including a retracted statement about the number of babies that were due to die in two days in Gaza. 

Of course, Palestinian suffering must be a focus of attention but Israel being debated more than the NHS should sound an alarm bell too. 

Where Parliament leads, society often follows, and whilst people have the right to protest, it is depressing that in marches across the country – including the day after the October 7 attacks, before the Israeli response, and again after the Manchester attack – antisemitism was openly on display. 

Those holding antisemitic banners and placards were not condemned enough, chants not dampened, and anti-Jewish racism not disavowed from the stage or by organisers. It means Jews feel compelled to hide their identities, challenge colleagues for grotesque social media distortions or simply leave. 

It means too often Jewish people are consoled when incidents like Bondi Beach happen, but can be ignored when less prominent examples of antisemitism take place. 

The global Jewish community is small, but overrepresented when it comes to targeted hate speech online. This modern form of the same old antisemitism is, in many cases, not illegal, so the case for removal becomes lost in debates about freedom of expression, and put into the ‘too hard’ basket, and so we come full circle.  

Tackling antisemitism requires leadership, not platitudes. Complaints processes and proactive initiatives must be fit for purpose. 

Yesterday, leaders put out statements condemning the attack on Jews in Australia. Today, far too many will simply continue as normal, leaving Jews in the UK less safe. 

Putting this in the ‘too hard’ box will no longer do. Though the sympathetic messages, and notes of solidarity in the wake of the Manchester and Sydney attack were welcome, what is needed is zero tolerance demonstrated through practical action.

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