Bondi Was Not a Surprise

It was a shock, but it was not a surprise. Two men driven by their pathological hatred of Jews have barbarically murdered innocents in Australia on its most iconic beach. In 2025, men with high-calibre weapons hunted Jews for sport.

I live in Bondi. My home is two hundred metres from the Lewis Continental Kitchen—the target of Iranian terrorists in 2024—and a little over seven hundred metres from the golden sands of Bondi Beach. In this small area are a half-dozen synagogues. Chabad of Bondi were the ones who organised Chanukah-by-the-Sea.

The shocking messages came to me minutes after the attack began, with people across the world asking if I was OK. We were driving to my parents’ house for a pre-planned Chanukah event of our own, watching a cavalcade of police and ambulance vehicles stream in the opposite direction towards Bondi.

The entire evening was spent watching 24-hour news channels, answering messages from friends asking if we were OK, and trying to eat the traditional sufganiot and latkes which, like all Jewish mothers’ cooking, were delicious—but I was hardly in the mood to eat.