In the days and weeks after the Oct. 7 massacre in Israel, a feeling settled over much of the Jewish world — including the vibrant, close-knit community here in Australia. It was a deep, aching numbness. It was as if all the color had drained from life, all the joy had been sucked out, leaving us as hollow, empty shells.
It was profoundly lonely and isolating, a grief that sat heavy in the chest and refused to move. Healing, when it came, was slow and fragile.
And now, after what happened in Sydney on Sunday, it is all happening again.
Two jihadist terrorists — a father and a son — opened fire on Jews celebrating Hanukkah at Bondi Beach, one of Australia’s most iconic and cherished landmarks. A place synonymous with sun, surf and the joys of the carefree Australian lifestyle became the scene of a massacre.
Fifteen people were murdered. Many more were wounded. The victims ranged from a 10-year-old child to an 87-year-old elder — including a Holocaust survivor, a much-loved community rabbi, a little girl with an infectious smile and a Russian immigrant who had "discovered his Jewish identity in Sydney."
And our existential hollowness has returned. The same question is hanging in the air: Will we ever feel joy again?
The screams of terror were not distant or imagined — they echoed across bloodstained sand and grass of the Bondi beachfront, near Sydney’s Jewish heartland.
For many decades before this, Australia had felt different.
Protected. Removed from the baggage of the old world. A continent buffered from the world’s hatreds by vast oceans. Australian Jews grew up believing — perhaps naively — that while antisemitism existed elsewhere, it would never fully take root here.
Over the last two years, that illusion has been chipping away at every protest that demonized "Zionists"/Jews, and at every attack against Jewish institutions and individuals.
There have been arson attacks on synagogues and restaurants, assaults, doxxing of Jewish creatives, boycotts of businesses and artists, graffiti and validation, public abuse of Jews of all ages, including school kids, the takeover of university campuses by extremists determined to make Jews unwelcome and viciously anti-Jewish chants at demonstrations in all major cities. Reported antisemitic incidents jumped to almost five times the pre-Oct. 7 average.
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Jewish community bodies kept warning that things were getting worse — that if it was not addressed, it would only be a matter of time before people were killed.
Yet much of Australia’s cultural elite insisted that this all was either a moral panic, a hoax or a red herring. Many said the real danger was not the antisemitism, but that acting against antisemitism would lead to the "suppression" of pro-Palestinian speech.
The worst offenders made the antisemitic claim that Jews were "weaponizing" antisemitism to shut down debate about policy toward Israel. Perhaps this misdirection and gaslighting, mostly from the left, had an influence on our left-leaning state and federal governments.
In any case, while some initiatives to counter-antisemitism were announced, and the statement "There is no place for antisemitism in Australia" was repeated numerous times, this never seemed to be a priority for our political leaders. They appointed an antisemitism envoy to study the problem, but in the five months since she made a series of recommendations, they have failed to even respond to them, much less implement them.
But there could be nothing more terrible for our community than having been proven right in this terrible way.
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What makes this pain uniquely Australian is not only the violence itself, but the betrayal of expectation. This was supposed to be the safe place. The place where history’s darkest chapters were something we remembered, not something we relived.
The vulnerability and anger that Australian Jews have been feeling for so long is also now being felt by non-Jewish Australians who love their country and do not want to see it dragged into the same ugly quagmire many countries around the world are now facing.
As has often been said, the Jews are the "canaries in the coal mine," and what starts with the Jews never ends with Jews. The attack in Bondi may sadly not be the end, but could be the beginning of an even more dangerous period ahead.
Perhaps when the Australian government truly grasps that reality, the fight against antisemitism — and the other hatreds and conspiracy theories that inevitably accompany it — can finally begin.
