The situation could have been worse but for the actions of Sydney’s police force and the quick work of a very brave unarmed bystander, Ahmed El-Ahmed, a Muslim man who tackled and disarmed one of the terrorists.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar reveals that Australia was “warned about potential attacks on Jews” — to no avail.

On December 14, on the holiday of Hanukkah — a time of celebration — a slaughter of innocent Jewish families took place at Australia’s famous Bondi Beach, in Sydney. Fifteen victims were murdered and 40 more wounded. One of the attackers, a Muslim immigrant named Sajid Akram, was killed by police; his son Naveed, the second attacker, was shot by police before being arrested.

The situation could have been worse but for the actions of Sydney’s police force and the quick work of a very brave unarmed bystander, Ahmed El-Ahmed, a Muslim man who tackled and disarmed one of the terrorists.

Israel’s Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar reveals that Australia was “warned about potential attacks on Jews” — to no avail. Some Israeli officials, therefore, are “blaming Canberra for not doing enough to combat antisemitism.” Sa’ar wrote:

“I’m appalled by the murderous shooting attack at a Hanukkah event in Sydney, Australia. These are the results of the anti-Semitic rampage in the streets of Australia over the past two years, with the anti-Semitic and inciting calls of ‘Globalise the Intifada’ that were realized today. The Australian government, which received countless warning signs, must come to its senses!”

Australia is generally a peaceful country – or at least it was until the Labor Party government decided to import thousands of Islamist asylum-seekers from Gaza and elsewhere.

Millions of unvetted migrants have arrived in Australia, Europe and the United States in recent years. Much of this activity has gone unmentioned by the media, and governments have seemed to be endeavouring to minimize the exposure of their counterproductive, catastrophic policies.

Australia’s fantasy of “social cohesion” has long been shown for what it is – a utopian construct without roots in reality. Similarly, the government’s affection for multiculturalism has long been discredited by realism. The indicator of the success or lack of it in these two ideologies is the treatment and well-being of Australia’s small Jewish community, who have been the victims of a virulent and often violent form of hatred.

Several terrorist acts have been perpetrated against Australian Jews in recent times (see here and here). After the home of Alex Ryvchin, an official of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, was subject to anti-Semitic vandalism, he stated that “evil is at work in this country,” and predicted that such acts would escalate.

The consequences of widespread social discord and anti-Semitic acts from Islamist immigrants in Western nations are well-documented; it is a mystery why Australia’s government apparently believes their nation would be an exception.

Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s government alienates Australia’s Jewish community by favoring the Palestinian cause – never mind that no one ever advocates for those living under the rule of Hamas and the Palestinian Authority to have freedom of speech and of the press, and freedom from arbitrary arrests, torture and extrajudicial executions.

The Australian government has been fast-tracking hundreds of potentially dangerous Palestinians and other Islamists into the country without proper vetting. Meanwhile, many of Israel’s official representatives are regarded as ‘personae non gratae’ and barred entry to countries in the West that should know better.

Australia’s government has been accused of executing a plan to accept radical “ISIS brides” into the country. When the plan for importing a third cohort of brides was exposed, influencer Scott Driscoll said, “no one else wants them, certainly not other Muslim states.” Driscoll further wrote:

“It’s absolutely treacherous that any Australian government claiming to have the interests of Australians, Australian values, or our national security front and centre would ever let these ‘ISIS brides’ anywhere near Australia ever again! Our country needs to stop being used as some sort of sick Looney Left social experiment to find out just how messed up things need to get before the final breaking point and the complete collapse of our society as we know it!”

There were early warning signs of the Australian government’s casual attitude towards growing Jew-hate following the horrendous events on October 7, 2023.

When Hamas and many “ordinary” Palestinians invaded peaceful southern Israel on October 7, they slaughtered all Israelis they came across – men, women, children, babies – torturing, raping, burning and beheading, then dragging 251 people off to Hamas’s tunnels in Gaza as hostages, for further abuse and leverage.

A few weeks later, the Biden administration produced a document condemning Jew-hatred, signed by “nearly three dozen countries.” The November 2023 statement referred to Hamas’s assault on innocents as “barbaric,” adding that it was “the most lethal assault against the Jewish people since the Holocaust,” and foreseeing it would have “an immense impact on Jewish communities worldwide.”

The US State Department’s special envoy on anti-Semitism urged the Australian government also to sign the statement. The suggestion was rejected. In August 2025, a former senior State Department official explained:

“We definitely asked the Australians, and they didn’t…. It was a huge sign that even though the United States pushed them to sign onto this statement—it’s not like we are committing them to anything…. They refused. It’s like the top country that should be on there is not on there.”

What a sorry indictment of Australia’s government.

It is quite understandable, therefore, that at a Gold Coast conference against antisemitism in September 2025, child Holocaust survivor Suzi Smeed scathingly described the Albanese government as an “enemy of the Jews”.

Subsequent to the October 7 atrocities, vocal anti-Israel demonstrations in Australia escalated.

“David May, research manager and senior research analyst at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, told JNS that ‘it is no coincidence that a dramatic rise in antisemitism is gripping Australia, while its government is reversing decades of balanced policy on Israel.'”

Co-opting iconic public settings such as Sydney’s Opera House, Harbour Bridge and Bondi Beach for their purposes, tens of thousands of anti-Israel acolytes supported by masses of “far-leftists” brought abrupt attention in Australia to the potential for escalating Jew-hate.

Unsurprisingly, at a July 2025 demonstration in Canberra, several Senators from the Green Party “gathered alongside anti-Israel activists in a wild protest outside Parliament House with demonstrators displaying Hitler posters.”

“The protest was organised by members of the Palestine Action Group outside the lawn of Parliament House and followed a joint international call for a ceasefire, with Australia joining 25 other nations in a statement demanding an immediate end to hostilities in Gaza….

“Israel has responded with sharp criticism of the statement, accusing the 26 countries of misrepresenting the situation.

“‘All statements and all claims should be directed at the only party responsible for the lack of a deal for the release of hostages and a ceasefire: Hamas, which started this war and is prolonging it,’ said the Israeli foreign ministry.”

In an article titled “Moral Bankruptcy on Parade,” Iranian-born Australian commentator Pouria Mehrani wrote of the protests against Israel:

“The politics of protests, such as we observed lately, thrives on blind emo­tion, especially in complex conflicts like this. Left-leaning groups capitalize on such emotions to advance their agendas…”

The silent majority of Australians finally have had enough of this nonsense and, in major cities, organized well-attended demonstrations, supporting Australia and its traditional Western values.

The government, in character, criticized one of these events in Sydney by claiming that it was run by neo-Nazis. According to the Times of Israel:

“‘We absolutely condemn the March for Australia rally that’s going on today. It is not about increasing social harmony’ Murray Watt, a senior minister in the Labor government, told Sky News television… ‘We don’t support rallies like this that are about spreading hate and that are about dividing our community,’ Watt said, asserting they were ‘organized and promoted’ by neo-Nazi groups.”

Nevertheless, the same government permitted an anti-Israel march across Sydney Harbour Bridge attended by 90,000 people, many waving PLO, Al-Qaeda, ISIS and Taliban flags, indicating support for terrorism and, by deduction, endorsing Jew-hate.

On September 7, so-called “pro-Palestinians” — who have never suggested that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas governments provide their citizens with freedom of speech or end arbitrary detentions and torture, not to mention epic corruption — clashed with Israel supporters at Sydney’s Bondi Beach, with the police intervening more than once. Rabbi Yossi Friedman posted footage of a scuffle in which police can be seen separating protesters. “They have come to Bondi Beach,” he commented, “where there’s a lot of Jewish people, specifically they’ve come here to bring their hate.”

Robert Gregory, CEO of the Australian Jewish Association (AJA) elaborated, “Bondi is home to many synagogues, Kosher restaurants and Jewish businesses, some of which have been targeted in recent antisemitic incidents. With more than 100 beaches across Sydney, the decision to choose Bondi was calculated to cause division and disturbance.”

These types of acts, however, should not be surprising to Australia’s Jewish community. It was probably, after all, inevitable that Jew-hate would filter down despite the continent’s remoteness. Islamism can be a hate-driven ideology, acted out through a contrived “Palestinian cause” to reach all sectors of Western societies. The more members of the extremist Islamist cohort are imported into a country, the more attacks on Jews — and others –will escalate.

At present, Australia has naïve policies that allow significant immigration of Islamists from war zones. Despite what the government claims, most of these immigrants do not intend to integrate, assimilate or contribute towards “social cohesion” – as the well-attended marches against Israel and Jews reveal. Many newcomers are ideological enemies of the Western democratic tradition and forthrightly plan to dominate open societies through imposition of Islamic Sharia law.

Their plan is actualized in pro-Islamist demonstrations at Australia’s iconic sites. It was Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who pointed out: “When your enemies vow to destroy you, believe them.” Australia’s Labor government has yet to grasp the magnitude of this statement.

As a result, the Australian government’s stated emphasis on social cohesion is, unfortunately, an illusion that is sadly detached from reality. It might well have been attainable to some degree prior to the mass arrival of extremist fanatics, and Australia’s decision — in contravention of international law governing the definition of nations — to recognize a nonexistent Palestinian state.

In a March 1977 interview with the Dutch newspaper Trouw, PLO official Zuheir Mohsen stated:

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese.”

It is past time, therefore, that Australia’s government awakened to the reality of Jew-hating Islamists and supporters in their midst, and applied appropriate remedial action before such disruptions spread further to the rest of society. Failing that, Australia will soon reflect increasing social turmoil as experienced in Europe and the UK. With the current “leftist-socialist” government in power, Australians are unfortunately paying a heavy price for their government’s irresponsible, catastrophic policies.

 egretnewseditor@gmail.com