The contrast was both shocking and deeply distressing. A group had assembled on the beach to celebrate with song, laughter, and doughnuts, marking Chanukah—a time for hope and gratitude—by lighting candles.

Just as these candles began to glow, symbolizing hope and resilience, tragedy struck. Two armed assailants attacked, shattering the moment of joy and turning it into one of terror and darkness.

Chanukah, also known as Hanukkah, is a celebration commemorating a miraculous event from 2,000 years ago when a small supply of oil burned for eight days in Jerusalem’s Temple. This festival stands for the victory of light over darkness, both in a literal and metaphorical sense.

It is unfathomable that anyone with compassion could commit such violence against men, women, and children during such a meaningful occasion.

As a former editor of the Jewish Chronicle, I have covered numerous horrific anti-Semitic attacks. I believed I had become desensitized to such hatred and thought there was little left that could surprise me. I assumed I understood the depths of anti-Semitic depravity.

Yet, I was mistaken. The horrifying events at Bondi Beach have profoundly unsettled me.

One reason is that, until now, I have never known personally any direct victims of an attack. Nothing brings the horror home more than when you realise that you know someone who has been hit.

Arsen Ostrovsky, a human rights lawyer, has long been one of the most vocal and effective campaigners against anti-Semitism. I published many of his articles in the Jewish Chronicle.

One of the gunmen during the Bondi beach attack in Sydney on Sunday

A man lights a candle for the victims of Australia’s worst mass shooting since 1996

Just a fortnight ago, after moving to Australia from Israel, he wrote of the ‘alarming surge in Jew-hatred since October 7, including the defilement of Australian landmarks being hijacked as platforms for intimidation’.

Yesterday Arsen was hit by a terrorist’s bullet. But, thank God, he is OK and was soon sending WhatsApp messages.

His warning about the surge in anti-Semitism could not have been more prescient.

The Bondi Beach attack was not an unpredictable outrage. It was the inevitable consequence of the Australian authorities’ and politicians’ refusal to tackle Jew‑hate – a refusal we see here in this country, too.

Within days of the October 7 massacre in Israel in 2023, a crowd gathered at Sydney Opera House to chant ‘f**k the Jews’. Not one of them was arrested, let alone charged.

Jewish-owned businesses in Australia – such as the Miznon restaurant in Melbourne – are regularly and violently attacked. Synagogues are set on fire.

This is the reality of life for Jews in Australia. There will not be a single Australian Jew who was surprised by Bondi – not least because the Australian PM, Anthony Albanese, is widely reviled in the Jewish community for his obsessive criticism of Israel and failing to take anti-Semitism seriously.

It is, to our shame, that the same situation exists in Britain.

The protesters march under the banner of ‘Free Palestine’. But their marches are not really about Palestine. They are about Jews, writes Stephen Pollard

When a terrorist struck at a Manchester synagogue on Yom Kippur in October, no British Jew was surprised. We knew an attack was coming, just not where it would take place.

For two years the streets of London and other cities have seen regular crowds of hate-marchers, sometimes as many as 200,000.

The response to October 7 itself, the worst massacre of Jews since the Holocaust, was a protest march the following Saturday – before a single Israeli soldier had even entered Gaza – against the victims of the massacre and in support of the perpetrators.

The protesters march under the banner of ‘Free Palestine’. But their marches are not really about Palestine. They are about Jews.

One of the regular slogans on the marches is ‘Globalise the intifada’ – a clear and unambiguous call for the mass slaughter of Jews to move beyond Israel. What happened on Bondi Beach was globalising the intifada in action, as was the Manchester synagogue attack. And when they chant it, the police just stand and watch.

As they do when protesters chant ‘Khaybar, Khaybar, Ya Yahud! Jaish Muhammad sawf ya’ud!’ on the marches, (‘Khaybar, Khaybar, O Jews! The Army of Muhammad Will Return!’). This is a reference to the battle of Khaybar in 628, when Muhammad’s army besieged and destroyed a thriving Jewish community. These relentless, wilfully targeted, anti-Semitic chants are now so commonplace that they barely merit a mention by the police or the media.

On Saturday, for instance, a crowd gathered in Birmingham and chanted, ‘We will honour all our martyrs’ and ‘Intifada Revolution’ – calls which only glamorise violence against Israel.

But the truth is there is a direct line from these chants and demonstrations to the Bondi murders, and indeed to every new terror attack. They form a continuum in which verbal assaults lay the groundwork for physical attacks.

Yet instead of the action needed to break this link, we get platitudes. ‘There is no place for anti-Semitism on the streets of Britain,’ we are told after every terrorist attack – a straightforward lie, since protesters and other Jew-haters are evidently given a very large space to spout their anti-Semitism on our streets.

That is why Jewish schools and community buildings have to have such tight security – and why anyone who signs up to attend a Jewish communal event will not be given the venue details until hours before, to try to stop terrorists from mounting an attack.

That is how we Jews live in Britain. It is our normality.

Bondi has been termed a ‘wake-up’ call. Sadly, it will be no such thing because, still, no one in authority is willing to tackle the anti-Semitism on our streets.

It will turn out to be just one in a long line of attacks that will carry on in Australia, in the US, in France and, of course, here.