Historian hopes Bondi wakes the West up

Historian Lord Andrew Roberts of Belgravia says he hopes the Bondi Beach massacre will be remembered as the moment the West woke up, and that Australia could lead the way in the struggle against antisemitism.

Roberts, a member of Britain’s House of Lords who chaired the October 7 Parliamentary Commission Report, was shown around Archer Park by Arsen Ostrovsky, who was shot in the December 14 attack.

“The fact that it’s so lovely and people are so happy and it’s a relaxed place makes it all the more obscene that somebody should have destroyed that,” Roberts told The AJN. “I’ve been to a lot of massacre sites, sadly, and this was more powerful because I heard directly from one person who was tied up in it.”

Roberts is in Australia to deliver the John Bonython Lecture at the Centre for Independent Studies’ 50th anniversary gala dinner.

He said future historians would be struck by how the world responded to October 7, calling it “the exact opposite of what you would imagine”.