Bondi Beach attack shatters life for Australia’s Jewish residents

SYDNEY — The sense of anger is palpable among members of the Jewish community in and around Bondi Beach as it recovers from the attack on a Hanukkah celebration that killed 15 people.

Much of their fury is directed at the government, which has been accused of failing to heed warnings about anti-Semitic threats before the Dec. 14 attack. But there has also been sadness and soul-searching about the place the community occupies in a neighborhood well known for its Jewish roots and in wider Australian society.

Linda Royal said her parents fled Poland after Nazi Germany invaded in 1939 and first arrived in Lithuania. They landed in Sydney two years later, aided by illegal transit visas issued by a Japanese diplomat.

“Like many migrants, they came to Bondi because it was a popular and inexpensive place,” she told NBC News last week near the scene of the shooting, on a hill where thousands of flowers had been laid in tribute to the victims.

In the years after his parents’ arrival, Royal said, the Jewish community grew in the neighborhood and its surrounding suburbs, first with Holocaust survivors and later with refugees known as refuseniks from countries in the former Soviet Union, some of whom had been denied permission to emigrate to Israel.

“There was a huge sense of community,” Royal said. “The Jewish community is united. Unfortunately, we are constantly fleeing persecution.”

Australia’s worst mass shooting in decades “has completely torn us apart”, she said. “It will never be the same again.”

Authorities identified the two suspects as Naveed Akram, 24, and his father, Sajid Akram, 50. The elder Akram was shot dead at the scene, while his son was charged last week with 59 crimes, including terrorism and 15 counts of murder, after waking up from a coma.

Investigators said the two men were inspired by the ideology of the Islamic State terrorist group. Two homemade ISIS flags were found in the younger suspect’s car, police said. ISIS praised but did not officially claim responsibility for the attack, calling it “the pride of Sydney” in an official publication.

In addition to the sadness over the attack, “there’s a lot of anger, a lot of rage,” Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, said by telephone on Tuesday.

“There’s a sense that not only was the writing on the wall, but the community explicitly and repeatedly told the government what was going to happen,” said Ryvchin, who was born in Ukraine before moving to Australia as a child.

The shooting was “a clear escalation from violent slogans and aggressive street protests and abuse against Jews in the streets, to harassment and vandalism of Jewish property and finally to firebombings,” he said, referring to several arsons against synagogues in recent years. It was “always going to end in murder, and that’s exactly where we are,” he added.

Ryvchin, whose former home was daubed with anti-Semitic slurs and whose cars were set on fire earlier this year, said neither the Australian federal government nor provincial leaders in New South Wales state had acted on proposals to reduce anti-Semitic violence.

These include more visible policing and a crackdown on pro-Palestinian protests that have become increasingly aggressive and have turned people against the Jewish community, he added.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, whose numbers according to the Sydney Morning Herald newspaper fell 15 points following the attack, said Tuesday his government would tackle hate speech and gun control and work with states on new laws.

New South Wales, where Bondi is located, debated tougher gun laws on Tuesday. The head of state is also trying to ban the display of terrorist symbols and curb demonstrations. Other states have indicated they will try to do the same.

But while they were welcomed by some, others criticized the hasty manner in which the government tried to bring them in. Antony Loewenstein, a journalist and author who sits on the advisory committee of the Jewish Council of Australia, a progressive group that campaigns for “Palestinian freedom,” said: “I think they are an absolute abomination. »

“They are rushed, without thought, and they are arguably unconstitutional,” he said, adding that he believed they would be challenged in court.

Three activist groups representing those who support Palestine and Aboriginal Australians have said they will challenge the proposed laws in Australia’s High Court.

Loewenstein also disputed Ryvchin’s assertion that pro-Palestinian marches in Australia, some of the largest of which took place in Sydney, had incited violence against the Jewish community.

Australia is home to many “progressive Jews who are deeply opposed to Israel’s massive massacre in Gaza” and who oppose Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s government, Lowenstein said.

“The truth is that there is literally no connection, as far as we know, between the murderers, these two men, father and son, and the pro-Palestinian movement. Zero,” he said. “We are of course concerned and frightened that Jews are being directly targeted, but we are also deeply concerned that our fears are being used as a weapon in the service of deeply undemocratic and draconian policies,” he added.

Others, like Ryvchin, are calling for a royal commission or major public inquiry into the attack. It’s necessary so that “Jews can walk the streets without fear and maybe next year we can come together again, like we do every year, and light the Hanukkah flames and hopefully not do it with police snipers on the rooftops,” he said.

Albanese has so far resisted calls for this, saying he wanted to avoid a drawn-out process and that royal commissions had not been held after similar incidents.

Whether or not it happens, in Bondi, Linda Royal said things would not be the same.

“We now associate this place with another Jewish massacre site, and that can never be taken away from us,” she said.