Why Australia’s Antisemitism Feels Like a Warning |
An antisemitic attack targeting Jewish life in Australia just as the Jewish world was about to celebrate the first light of Hanukkah left a community shaken and once again forced a reckoning with how quickly political hostility toward Israel can translate into real-world danger for Jews far from the Middle East.
On Sunday, December 14, 2025, a violent attack targeted a public Hanukkah gathering and menorah lighting near Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. The reports described two gunmen, a father and son reportedly with ties to Islamic extremism, opening fire on families gathered for the holiday, with early accounts indicating that at least 16 people were killed, including a child, and over 40 more injured, including some seriously. Australian authorities characterized the incident as an antisemitic terrorist attack on Jewish communal life, and details continue to emerge.
What struck me most about these reports was not only their horror, but their familiarity.
From Jerusalem, Australia appears geographically distant, almost abstract — a place associated with beaches, prosperity, and a Jewish community long considered stable and well-integrated. However, viewed through a Canadian lens, the attack felt less like a shocking aberration than a warning flare. I have seen this progression before. I grew up inside it.
Canada and Australia share more than Commonwealth ties and parliamentary systems. They share a political temperament: a belief in moderation, civility, and moral balance; a confidence that extremism belongs elsewhere; and a tendency to frame national identity through narratives of reconciliation and restraint. Jews in both societies were encouraged to believe that antisemitism, while never eradicated, had been safely relegated to the margins.
That belief has proven dangerously optimistic.
Montreal: Deep Jewish Roots, Persistent Hostility
Montreal is home to one of the largest and oldest Jewish communities in North America. Jewish life there is not peripheral. It is historical, institutional, and deeply woven into the city’s cultural, economic, and intellectual fabric. And yet, year after year, Montreal records some of the highest levels of reported antisemitic incidents in Canada.
This contradiction is often explained away as statistical coincidence or the inevitable friction of urban diversity. For those living within the Jewish community, however, the pattern is unmistakable. Antisemitism in Montreal is not episodic. It is ambient.
Jewish schools and synagogues operate behind layers of security that would be unthinkable for most other religious communities. Community centers plan events with police coordination as a matter of routine. Acts of vandalism, intimidation, and harassment are familiar enough to be anticipated, yet insufficiently disruptive to prompt sustained........