It is difficult to put into words the enormity of the massacre at Bondi Beach for Australian Jews and Australians in general. It has been compared to October 7. That analogy is apt in terms of the proportion of Australian Jews who were murdered or wounded: 15 murdered and 37 wounded out of 120,000. Like in Israel on October 7 2023, everybody knows somebody killed or injured, or knows somebody who knows somebody.

But actually, the Bondi Beach massacre was even worse than October 7, for three reasons.

First, the Bondi Beach massacre was not an invasion; it was a father and son driving from one suburb of Sydney to another to commit mass murder of their fellow Australians, just because they are Jews. Furthermore, they used legally obtained shotguns and rifles in a country which has very strict gun controls and where gun violence is rare.

Secondly, the Bondi Beach massacre took place after two years during which Jew hatred and vilification became normalized in Australian public places and discourse, and Australian Jews begged their political leaders to stop it, but they were largely ignored. Every Australian Jew says the same thing – they are shocked, but not surprised by the massacre at Bondi Beach. Just two days after October 7 2023, while bodies and body parts still lay on the ground and in smoldering houses and cars in southern Israel, the New South Wales state government and police allowed an anti-Israel protest to take place on the steps of the iconic Sydney Opera House at the same time that they lit........

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