Mourning Israel and Bondi’s fallen

More than 1000 people gathered at the Central Synagogue for a Yom Hazikaron commemoration presented by the Zionist Council of NSW and JNF NSW – made all the more profound by it being the first since the Bondi Chanukah terror attack that killed 15 people on December 14.

Dr Orna Triguboff, president of the Zionist Council of NSW, opened the service by noting how Yom Hazikaron’s expanding circle of remembrance now includes Jewish victims of terror in the Diaspora, in addition to fallen Israeli soldiers and terror victims in Israel.

Rabbi Shua Solomon spoke of friend and IDF soldier Ari Zenilman – a father of a newborn baby – who returned to combat when called up after October 7, and was killed in Gaza months later while running towards an ambush in a bid to save lives.

“That’s the type of person Ari was,” Rabbi Solomon said, before paying tribute, too, to his dear friends and colleagues, Rabbis Eli Schlanger and Yaakov Levitan, who “had travelled to Israel on a mission after October 7 to support the chayalim … and then tragically got killed last December in the Bondi terror attack.”

Bondi survivor Chaya Dadon, 14, retold her harrowing story of shielding two children with her body, and getting shot in the process.

“In that moment, violence and terror was no longer something happening thousands of kilometres away.”

She then paid tribute to two terror victims – 12-year-old Israeli girl Liel Hetzroni who was murdered on October 7 in Kibbutz Be’eri, and 10-year-old Matilda Bee Britvan, the youngest killed in Bondi.

“They will never grow up, but their light does not end here – it lives in how we remember them, and how we support each other, as one people.”

Sarah Vanunu, Israel emissary for JNF Australia, remembered her colleague Sergeant First Class Benyamin Asulin, killed in Gaza at the age of 28 – and his beaming, genuine and constant smile.

On December 14, she was barely 50m away from the gunfire, as her son’s bar mitzvah reception was taking place at Bondi Pavilion.

“The same hatred that took Benyamin in the dunes of Gaza reached for us on the shores of Bondi,” Vanunu said.

Sarah Ribner-Grabin, representing the Jewish Agency, told the story of the more than 120 men and women murdered in a 1948 massacre at Kfar Etzion – a place she now calls home.

Memorial prayers, music, a segment by Zionist youth movement leaders, tribute speeches by Israelis for fallen colleagues and a JNF Yom Hazikaron exhibition completed the service.