An inevitable, and preventable tragedy
How silence, inaction and the normalisation of Jew-hatred led to the Bondi terror attack.
It was always going to happen. Our communal leaders kept saying it. We wrote it more than once here. Unless something was urgently done to curb the tide of Jew-hatred in Australia, somebody was going to end up getting killed.
In the end it was sixteen.
With others still critical, it could end up being more.
The worst shooting attack in Australia since Port Arthur. The worst terror attack against Jews anywhere in the world since October 7.
It could have – and should have – been prevented.
Strong leadership could have stopped antisemitism becoming mainstream after the grotesque events at the Opera House on October 9, 2023.
But that was just the start. As Jews were doxxed, as Jewish businesses were targeted in scenes out of 1930s Germany, as Jewish artists were cancelled, as our university students were harassed and othered, as our shules were set on fire, not enough was done.
The government shoulders a hefty share of the blame. It repeatedly ignored our community’s pleas for stronger action, thinking it knew better. When it appointed Jillian Segal as Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism, we opined that the true test would be if it listened to her. It didn’t.
Segal’s report has been gathering dust since July. According to reports, Anthony Albanese didn’t even raise it in a meeting with Premiers after the massacre.
But the government isn’t solely to blame. The Greens have sown division repeatedly since October 7. Civil Australia stood by as antisemitism festered in its midst.
The saying goes, “silence is deadly”. And it was. While some Australians had the courage to call out what was happening, too many did not.
As we now look towards burying our dead, tell your non-Jewish friends, colleagues – everyone you know – that hatred against Jews is a uniquely evil form of racism that always ends in death.
Tell them to tell all their friends to call it out every single time they see it, whether in the workplace, online, in the street, in their social circles. Tell them that what happened on Sunday is the literal definition of “globalise the intifada”.
The attack at Bondi happened because Australia let it. It can’t be taken back, but there may still be time to save our nation.
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