Inspired by her father’s bravery

(TIMES OF ISRAEL) Passover was always one of her family’s favourite festivals, but this year, Sheina Gutnick was dreading the holiday’s arrival. It was the first time celebrating without her father, Reuven Morrison, who was murdered in the terror attack at Chabad of Bondi’s Chanukah by the Sea gathering at Bondi Beach in December.

“My dad loved Passover. He would prepare everything himself for the seder, barbecuing the lamb shanks, grinding up his own maror,” Gutnick said.

“I think he really felt a deep connection to the festival as an ex-Soviet Jew who lived behind the Iron Curtain, and he really related to Jewish suffering and the Exodus from Egypt.”

In the three months since the Bondi Beach shooting attack, which saw 15 people killed by a father and son inspired by the Islamic State terror organisation, Gutnick has hardly had a chance to breathe.

She and others successfully lobbied Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to establish a royal commission into the Bondi attack, she met with Israeli President Isaac Herzog on his visit to Australia, she has spoken to international media about rising antisemitism in Australia, and has tried to piece together exactly what happened in the moments before her father’s death.

The work is relentless, but so is the need behind it: to understand how something like this could happen in a country that has not historically seen itself as having an entrenched antisemitism problem.

What remains most vivid to Gutnick, however, is the night that her father was killed.

Morrison, who lived across the road from his daughter in Melbourne, had travelled to Sydney for the Chanukah event. After immigrating to Australia, Morrison first lived in Sydney and maintained close ties with the Chabad of Bondi community, attending the Chanukah festivities almost every year.

Gutnick, who was at a Chanukah party in Melbourne with her husband and children, ran into a friend when she first got an inkling that something was wrong.

“As we were leaving the [Melbourne] Chanukah party, I saw that my friend was as grey as a ghost. He told me that he had just got off the phone with his family and that there was a shooting at the Chabad of Bondi party,” she said.

In the minutes that followed, events unfolded in a blur.

“Immediately, I tried calling my dad, and he didn’t pick up, and then I called my mum, and she picked up. In the background, I could hear shooting; she was screaming down the phone. I asked her what was going on, and she said they were shooting people on the beach. Later, I found out she was actually covering her friend with her body. She herself was screaming that my dad is running after the terrorists.”

In the days and weeks after the attack, Gutnick began reconstructing her father’s final moments. She drew on witness footage, widely circulated online, and conversations with those who had been there. The timeline, as she understands it, is precise.

Tragedy unfolds

The shooting began at 6.42pm, just before the scheduled Chanukah candle lighting. At around 6.48pm, shop owner Ahmed al Ahmed, who was in the vicinity, tackled one of the gunmen and took his weapon. The footage of that moment went viral globally.

Shortly after, Morrison and Gefen Bitton, an Israeli living in Australia, appeared to act in tandem. Bitton was immediately shot and critically injured. Morrison managed to retrieve the gun that Ahmed al-Ahmed had taken from the terrorist and began moving back toward the attackers.

Al-Ahmed and Morrison are then pictured sheltering behind a tree, with Morrison holding the weapon, but there is no footage of Morrison actually shooting the gun.

“He had previously held a gun licence, and he knew how to use a gun,” said Gutnick.

Still grieving in the aftermath of the attack, Gutnick went over all the available footage, slowly and methodically, looking at every detail, trying to work out if her father had shot back at the terrorists.

“It was really difficult to look at the footage, but I had an internal need to understand my dad’s final moments, and I was trying to get into his mind. What was he thinking while all of that adrenaline was going through him?

“As more footage started coming out, I was drawn to it, trying to analyse it. I knew my dad was very calm in very high stress environments, and then suddenly, my husband noticed that there were puffs of smoke on the bridge in one of the videos,” she said.

That small detail immediately confirmed Gutnick’s suspicions.

“The two terrorists are on the bridge, shooting at people, but then in some of the footage circulated online, they are ducking, almost as if they are taking cover. And then if you look closely at the footage, you can see that there are what appear to be bullets ricocheting off the bridge, creating little puffs of smoke, as someone fires back at them, and instantly I knew it was my dad.”

The ultimate sacrifice

When Gutnick and her husband shared their analysis with police, suggesting that Morrison had fired back at the terrorists, they were told the investigation was ongoing and that no official confirmation could be given, but that the theory aligned with the publicly available footage.

Gutnick does not need absolute certainty about every detail to understand what her father did.

“We already knew so much from the pictures and images we have, how my dad stared down the terrorists eye to eye, and we have the footage of him throwing a brick at them and how he did literally everything he could with every fibre of his being to save people,” she said. “But still, knowing that he shot the gun, that was incredible. He fought with everything he had to save as many people as he could.”

Interviewed ahead of her father’s favourite holiday, Passover, Gutnick was still raw with grief, but within the grief sat enormous pride.

“The idea of being in Melbourne in our home, where my dad would lead the seder, and knowing he won’t be here this year, that would be way too painful to imagine,” she said.

Instead, the entire Morrison-Gutnick family chose to go away for Passover and to celebrate Morrison’s bravery while mourning their gigantic loss.

“My kids asked me, ‘Why did Zaida have to fight?'” said Gutnick. “And I asked them, ‘What do you think, would Zaida hide or fight back?’

“They looked at me and said, ‘He would fight.’ Even though it is so painful for them that he gave his life, it was a choice he actively made, and he saved lives,” said Gutnick.