The Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion was established following the worst ever terrorist attack on Australian soil in our nation’s history.
The fundamental responsibility of any government is to provide security to its citizens and protect them from harm. The terrorist attack at Bondi on 14 December 2025 marked an obvious and grievous failure to discharge that responsibility. It is essential therefore the Royal Commission reckon with this failing and the circumstances and decisions that contributed to it.
In fulfilling this role, the Royal Commission must also highlight the lived experience of Jewish Australians, which is in many respects that of a different class of citizenry. Increasingly in recent years, Jewish Australians have been forced to lead different lives, and forego many of the freedoms and liberties afforded to all other Australians, because of their faith and identity. This experience is little known to the wider Australian public. More seriously, it became normalised in the months leading up to the Bondi attack. Exploring the relationship between the widespread climate of normalised antisemitism that prevailed in the leadup to the Bondi attack, and the appalling violence witnessed on that day, is one of the most difficult tasks facing the Royal Commission. And yet it is among the most essential.
Aside from making all Australians safer, such an exercise will go some way to helping Jewish Australians reclaim their faith in the institutions which so clearly failed them.
When the sun shone its first rays on Bondi Beach that morning of Sunday 14 December 2025, it greeted the Australia that we knew and we loved. But, when the sun set on that same day, it did so to the cries of grief, to the wailing of sirens, to the frantic agony of families. It set on a nation irrevocably transformed.
Fifteen innocent lives were taken at the Hanukkah by the Sea celebration in Bondi, by perpetrators with malice in their hearts. This was the creation of human agency: a premeditated massacre targeted at the heart of Sydney’s Jewish community.
It was not, as some wished to treat it at the time, a mere natural disaster: a tragedy but one lacking in ethical character and motive. This moral distinction is important.
On that dark day, the destinies of many were stolen from them. Their stories have been told but nevertheless bear repeating. They were:
Edith Brutman, a community figure well known for her work at B'nai B'rith;
Dan Elkayam, a French national who'd made his life and his home in Australia and was celebrating his Jewish faith;
Boris and Sofia Gurman, a couple married for over 30 years, who died in each other's arms;
Alex Kleytman, someone who survived the Holocaust only to be murdered by Jew hatred in Australia several decades later, who died while shielding his wife;
Rabbi Yaakov Levitan, a fixture of the Bondi chabad community, active in the Beth Din, who was the general manager of the main synagogue at Bondi;
Peter Meagher, decorated police detective of over three decades in the eastern suburbs, a stalwart fan of rugby and an amateur photographer, whose funeral filled St Mary's Cathedral earlier this year;
Reuven Morrison, who bravely confronted the attacker and who discovered his Jewish identity after immigrating from the Soviet Union a few decades ago;
Marika Pogany, who delivered tens of thousands of meals on wheels from the COA headquarters in Bondi Junction, even into her 80s, looking after people less fortunate than herself;
Matilda, named by her Ukrainian parents because it was the most Australian name they could think of and because they saw her as a gift of their new life here in Australia;
Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a close personal friend of mine, and one of the principal organisers of the celebration;
Adam Smyth, a father of four who was walking with his wife, Katrina, on Bondi Beach that afternoon;
Boris Tetleroyd, whose son Yaakov is still recovering from his injuries;
Tania Tretiak, a Randwick regular and fixture of the Bondi chabad community; and
Tibor Weitzen, who had one of the best singing voices in the Bondi chabad community.
Each of these people was a universe unto themselves. Each was a biography in the making, defined by dreams, by achievements and by regrets. They were people of destiny, and that destiny was snatched away by people with malice in their hearts and with hate in their souls. Their lives were taken by antisemitic terrorism.
I knew several of the victims personally and others I knew by face and reputation. Many of them were from the Russian-Jewish community centred around the Chabad of Bondi, where Eli Schlanger and Yaakov Levitan served with such devotion.
Eli, in particular, was more than a community leader; he was a friend. I shared Shabbat dinners with him. I celebrated birthdays with him. At the time of Passover, he would arrange for me to buy the chometz and subsequently sell it back to the Jewish community. It was Eli who was the driving force behind Chanukah by the Sea, the celebration that was the scene of this terrible massacre on 14 December. Although he was realistic about the threats that his own community faced, Eli was never willing to hide away his Jewishness. He was never prepared to forego sharing the spirit and the teaching of Judaism with non-Jews. He was never prepared to hide who he was or his faith.
Many Australians behaved heroically that day to confront the terrorists, to protect the innocent and to help the wounded, from regular citizens to lifesavers, bystanders, hospital workers and police. These heroes deserve our thanks and our recognition, but we must not permit their heroism to be used as a shield against accountability.
Heroism cannot wash away the stain of national shame. It cannot bring back the dead, and it must not permit us to avoid the searching and the fundamental questions this massacre demands.
These are: Why are Jewish people unable to live safely in Australia? Why do Jewish schools require armed guards? Why must a community of faith feel anxious simply for gathering? Why did the worst terrorist attack in our history target a community that makes up less than one per cent of our population—a community that has been nothing but a model of contribution, civic pride, tolerance, respect and peaceful
co-existence since it arrived here some 240-odd years ago?
Among the victims in Bondi were those who survived the Holocaust, those who fled war and those who fled antisemitism in Europe. They came here for safety. Yet it was here, in Australia, that the hatred they fled from found them.
In the aftermath of the Bondi terror attack, many described it as ‘unthinkable’. But it was not unthinkable: in fact it was all too predictable.
Many responded to the attack by asserting that hateful ideology and antisemitism have no place in Australia. But this is an empirically unfounded assertion. The truth is such ideologies not only have more than a foothold in Australia, but were allowed to grow largely unchecked for 27 months.
Many decried “This is not who we are”. But, like it or not, this is who we have become.
Reckoning with these failings involves a reckoning with our self-conception and
self-identity as Australians, which is why it is likely to prove so challenging, and why a Royal Commission is necessary.
To state the obvious, the Bondi terrorist attack represents a grievous failing about which we were repeatedly warned.
It marked the apotheosis of a failure of leadership, a failure of state capacity, and a failure to confront reality.
As someone who served as Australia’s Ambassador to Israel from 2013 to 2017, and who represented the federal electorate of Wentworth – home to Sydney’s largest Jewish community – from 2019 to 2022, I had observed for over a decade how conflict in the Middle East involving Israel inevitably carried repercussions in Australia domestically for the Jewish community, with spikes in antisemitism accompanying Israel’s military actions.
Following the 7 October 2023 barbaric terrorist attacks by Hamas against Israel, it was clear that the necessary and inevitable Israeli military operation that followed would be orders of magnitude greater than in previous rounds of conflict, and that consequently the challenge to social harmony in Australia would be orders of magnitude greater.
If this was not immediately obvious to Australia’s security and intelligence community, it was made painfully clear on 9 October 2023. This was the day when the Sydney Opera House was lit in the colours of the Israeli flag to express solidarity with Israel and its victims. Rather than providing a place for reflection, collective mourning and commemoration, the occasion was hijacked by a mob burning Israeli flags and chanting vile, hateful slogans directed at Jewish Australians.
This was at a time when Israeli forces had not yet entered Gaza or attacked Hamas in any meaningful way, when Israeli security agencies were entirely focused on finding Hamas terrorists still on Israeli soil, on rescuing civilians still held hostage in their homes, in treating the wounded and recovering the dead, and in identifying who had been taken hostage by Hamas and spirited back to Gaza.
If anti-Israel protests with antisemitic slogans were a feature of Australia even at this point, when the only victim of military aggression was Israel, then it should have become clear that the baseline level of hostility towards Australia’s Jewish population was already dangerously high, and would escalate further.
It was also clear from a very early stage that it was the Jewish population, and the Jewish population alone, that would bear the brunt of a breakdown in social harmony and a deterioration in law and order.
There were no protests against Hamas or its backers in Australia. There were no protests that targeted any other faith or ethnic group in Australia. There was not an upsurge in Islamophobia or other forms of racial and religious discrimination connected to the war in Gaza. From a very early stage, it was clear that the Jewish community, and the Jewish community alone, would be the target of hate and vitriol.
Here, I contend, is where the political failures began. Rather than recognising this reality, and forcefully and repeatedly denouncing these early displays of antisemitism, political leaders responded with equivocation and weakness.
They failed to draw a clear line between public concerns expressed about the actions of the state of Israel, and the attempt to hold Jewish Australians collectively responsible for the actions of the state of Israel. This clear line, which Australia had previously enforced when it came to other foreign conflicts, became blurred.
Political leaders were also hesitant or resistant to calling out antisemitism and the threat to the Jewish community specifically. Instead, it was grouped together with other forms of racial prejudice and diluted in a broad appeal for ‘social cohesion’.
This pattern, set by political leaders early on, continued for the subsequent
two-and-a-half years, even as the evidence mounted that the only victim from the breakdown in Australia’s social cohesion, and the only target of the vitriol increasingly testing the thresholds of criminality, was the Jewish community.
The initial response by ASIO, on 12 October 2023, in maintaining the terrorist threat level at ‘possible’, did not address the security threats, which, even at that point, were obvious to the Jewish community.
In retrospect, this was an inflection point. Had Australia’s political leaders used analytical clarity in assessing the threat facing Australia, and responded decisively and with moral clarity to the florid displays of antisemitism already unfolding, the climate of hate in which the Bondi attack occurred may never have developed.
We will never know whether or not such an approach would have prevented the atrocity of December 14. But what is certain is that it would have given Jewish Australians the comfort of knowing they were supported unequivocally by their own political leaders. At a minimum it seems likely that such a response would have reduced both the volume and the ferocity of the hundreds of anti-semitic incidents that followed in the wake of October 7.
The explanation for this form of denialism - an unwillingness to identify and grapple with the analytical reality - is not straightforward.
The most charitable interpretation is that condemning the acts of protestors and vigilantes, and standing up overtly for the rights of the Jewish community to live as every other Australian, might have further inflamed social tensions at a time when they were already high.
The less charitable interpretation, and the more likely one, is that political leaders and people in positions of moral and legal authority, from university vice-chancellors to corporate figures and police and security chiefs, had as their highest aim to avoid causing offence to any particular community, on an issue where passions ran high, and so took no position at all.
Regardless of the motivation, this approach was nonetheless mistaken, because what was tolerated quickly became normalised.
A misguided pursuit of social harmony at all costs, where principles were jettisoned in pursuit of accommodation and ‘lowering the temperature’, led instead to a steady deterioration in the security environment and a growing climate of lawlessness and fear within the Jewish community.
The failure to call out and name the rise of antisemitism in Australia for what it was also led to several unfortunate consequences.
Political leaders set the parameters for others in positions of authority, from broadcasters and media personalities to academics, opinion leaders and corporate figures. And so a failure to lead adequately at the political level cascaded throughout society.
The federal government in particular consistently demonstrated a reluctance to treat this growing threat to the Jewish community as a tier-one national security crisis, responding with equivocation rather than resolve.
This reluctance was evident from the outset. The Prime Minister declined for several weeks to convene the National Security Committee of cabinet to assess the domestic implications following the 7 October attacks, even though this should have been the default course of action.
A special envoy on antisemitism was appointed in mid-2024, but for some reason had to be ‘balanced’ with the appointment of a special envoy on Islamophobia. The rationale for this decision was never convincingly explained. And in circumstances where the scale of persecution directed at the Jewish Australians was clearly dwarfing that being felt by any other section of the community, the decision to
appoint a special envoy on Islamophobia effectively undermined the government's efforts to address antisemitism, such as they were.
In any case, the reports and recommendations of both envoys were largely ignored.
It was only after sustained public pressure from his own antisemitism special envoy that the Prime Minister convened the national cabinet of state Premiers, in January 2025 and following the ‘Dural caravan’ plot, to discuss the issue of antisemitism.
When university vice-chancellors sought explicit legal guidance from the
Attorney-General on how to handle the encampments and hateful rhetoric, they were left to flounder.
The federal Minister for Education publicly equivocated on the meaning of inflammatory phrases like "from the river to the sea" and "intifada," suggesting they mean "different things to different people".
Too often, senior federal government ministers demonised Israel's conduct in inflammatory terms without evidence, dog-whistling to a domestic audience while remaining reckless as to the license it provided to extreme elements in Australia.
Antisemitism was frequently grouped in with other forms of racial prejudice in a masterclass of "whataboutism," rather than being confronted on its own terms as an immediate crisis.
Put simply, political leaders refused to recognise the rise of antisemitism as a distinct phenomenon, and neglected to prioritise it as a national challenge. That posture was consequently adopted throughout Australia’s body politic, including - inevitably - in important institutions with protective roles.
To cite but two examples, the Australian Human Rights Commission failed to take a leadership role in the public debate. When it did take a stand, it was dilutive: antisemitism was to be tackled holistically alongside other forms of racism.
Likewise the esafety Commissioner seemed reluctant to take a leadership role or to call out and caution the use of digital platforms to foment antisemitism and vilify Jewish Australians. The legal powers of both entities are limited, but their cultural and persuasive power is significant. They failed to use their voice.
In Australia’s political system, the internal resource allocations and priorities of law enforcement and security agencies reflect political direction, both direct and indirect.
The decision to downplay the risk and threat environment by political leaders inevitably echoed through agencies under their command, from state and federal police forces to ASIO.
If politicians were not treating an issue as a top-order priority, why would the security chiefs under their command?
The result was, as the Royal Commission has already found, insufficient resources were devoted to monitoring threats to the Jewish community and maintaining their safety in a heightened environment. Task forces were stood up in response to an incident but then quietly stood down. Intelligence resources devoted to
counter-terrorism did not match the severity of the threat environment.
In New South Wales, thousands more policing hours were devoted to escorting anti-Israel protestors than were devoted to keeping the Jewish community safe.
Even when the terrorist threat level was raised by ASIO to ‘probable’, in August 2024, there was not an apparent shift that I could detect in the posture, presence or priorities of security and law enforcement agencies.
In addition, the professed desire of political leaders to ‘lower the temperature’ meant there was no meaningful use of the salutary deterrent power of law enforcement.
Arrests were not made. Charges were not laid. There was simply no political appetite to back in law enforcement if they embarked down this path.
The result was, in the words of the ASIO announcement raising the terrorist threat level, “a security climate that is more permissive of violence”.
Tracking the deterioration in Australia’s security climate from 7 October 2023 to 14 December 2025 is to witness a car crash in slow motion.
The deterioration did not happen overnight, but it was steady and inexorable, and the destination was visible throughout.
The escalation began merely two days after the 7 October massacres, when on 9 October 2023 the Sydney Opera House was hijacked by a mob burning Israeli flags and chanting vile, hateful slogans directed at Jewish Australians.
Rather than mounting a robust law enforcement response to protect mourners, police advised Jewish Australians to stay at home for their own safety. The sole arrest made that evening was of a Jewish man for carrying an Israeli flag, in solidarity with the victims of Hamas’s terrorist attack.
The chronicle of all that followed will have been covered in many other more authoritative submissions to the Royal Commission.
But to provide a brief synopsis. Several hundred Jewish Australians were ‘doxxed’, with their personal and business details published to subject them to coordinated harassment. Jewish businesses were actively boycotted. On university campuses, Jewish students and academics were subjected to radical encampments, forced to avoid classes, and stripped of their right to safely access education. Jews were physically assaulted on our streets and on public transport simply for displaying Jewish insignia. Students at Jewish schools were harassed and urged to mask their identity.
The escalatory ladder continued, moving on to property damage, the torching of vehicles, the firebombing of a childcare centre, the firebombing of a synagogue. I witnessed the aftermath and consequences of many such events, visiting the sites and communicating with those impacted. And my alarm grew at the growing momentum of such events.
Public expressions of hostility were tolerated for too long, and because they were tolerated, they became permissible. The Overton window of acceptable behaviour shifted, normalising hate and providing extreme elements with a license to operate.
For over two years, we witnessed a sustained campaign of harassment, vitriol and violence targeted at one specific community here in Australia, unprecedented in our history.
No other form of racial prejudice would have been allowed to fester and grow and ferment and metastasise in this way, but too many of our institutions and too many of our leaders turned a blind eye. Too often the instigators were contextualised or given a pass. Too many leaders treated this as a Jewish problem and not an Australian problem.
In this climate, and with this pattern of escalation, it was clear that the Jewish community was facing a heightened risk. But there did not appear to be a commensurate security response reflecting this heightened risk.
The intent and at least some of the capabilities to stage a mass-casualty attack had already been manifested in earlier incidents. The obvious high-risk areas were the key neighbourhoods of Australia’s Jewish community in Sydney and Melbourne, specifically Sydney’s eastern suburbs and the neighbourhood of Caulfield in Melbourne. The obvious high-risk targets were Jewish communal gatherings in open or exposed locations. No specific intelligence or indeed any particular insight was needed to draw these straightforward conclusions.
Chanukkah by the Sea at Bondi Beach had all these components to qualify as a high-risk event, but yet it does not seem to have been assessed or treated as such.
Whatever the reason or explanation, and wherever the fault lies, this can only be described as a clear security failure.
The Royal Commission will draw its own conclusions, but historically intelligence failures of this sort usually originate from a combination of complacency, groupthink, and a failure of imagination.
As Australia had never before experienced a mass-casualty terrorist attack, it may have been hard for authorities to conceive of one taking place.
But the warning signs were all there, and had been flashing red for many months. Only foresight, not hindsight, was needed to see what was coming.
The Bondi terror attack was not inevitable or unpreventable, and should not be assessed as such.
The failures of government, at both state and federal levels, to recognise the magnitude of the threat and to deal with it accordingly, allowed a climate of antisemitism to develop, flourish, and become normalised.
Even before the Bondi terror attack, this was imposing an intolerable and unacceptable burden on a section of the Australian community.
Further, the relative complacency of political leaders, despite the escalating severity of threat and violence, inevitably influenced the security and law enforcement agencies under their command, including decisions of resource allocation.
A more rigorous risk and threat assessment of the Chanukkah by the Sea event, and the provision of greater security measures, may have at least mitigated elements of the attack once underway, even if it was not prevented. Such operational decisions are inevitably taken within a political context provided by elected leaders.
The Bondi terrorist attack was correctly seen as an attack on all Australians. On our collective values, principles and our way of life.
But it is tragic that it has taken a massacre of this magnitude to elevate the issue of antisemitism, and the unique dilemmas and fears faced by Jewish Australians, to the level of national concern.
If a similar campaign of sustained harassment, doxxing, firebombing, and
state-sponsored targeting had been directed at any other religious or ethnic minority group, it would have been immediately recognised as a national emergency. It would have demanded an overriding, bespoke security response and united condemnation.
The fact that it was allowed to ferment when directed at the Jewish community points to a devastating institutional blind spot. It was treated as an issue unique and specific to the Jewish community, and consequently not of national significance.
If nothing else, the Bondi terrorist attack should have awoken us to the profound error of this approach.
Australia has forged a prosperous, secure, and harmonious nation out of the most diverse group of people imaginable.
But this national experiment only works if the civic basis of the nation is strong and uncompromising.
Foremost amongst these civic values that have underpinned our success as a multi-ethnic nation are the non-importation of foreign conflicts and animosities, and
the belief that there are no hierarchies of citizenship, with all citizens enjoying equal civil and political rights and the full protection of the law.
The past several years has seen a serious erosion of these foundational norms. We have permitted foreign conflicts to be imported into Australia and weaponised against a particular group of Australians. We have tolerated the steady diminution of the rights and freedoms of Jewish Australians, such that their citizenship is worth less than that of other Australians.
Neither of these are acceptable on their own terms.
But nor are they acceptable as a matter of principle, because they would cut at the very heart of our nation.
If we cannot guarantee the safety of one community in Australia, then the security of every Australian is an illusion.
Dave Sharma
Senator for New South Wales
13 June 2026