Deadly Hanukkah attack at Bondi Beach comes after years of escalating antisemitic incidents in Australia

by Asaf Elia-Shalev

(JTA) — Australia’s Jewish community has faced an alarming uptick in antisemitic violence and threats in recent years, a trend that reached an unprecedented and tragic peak Sunday when gunmen opened fire on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, killing at least 11 people and wounding nearly 30 others in what authorities have called an antisemitic terrorist attack.

The Bondi Beach massacre, during an event hosted by Chabad of Bondi in Sydney marking the first night of Hanukkah, involved at least two gunmen firing on hundreds of attendees from a footbridge overlooking the crowd. One attacker was killed and the other arrested in critical condition. Investigators also found suspected improvised explosive devices near a suspect’s vehicle. 

While Australia has historically been considered a relatively safe environment for its Jewish minority, a range of incidents in the past few years signaled shifting dynamics.

The Executive Council of Australian Jewry has documented what it calls an unprecedented surge in antisemitic incidents. In a special report released earlier this month, the group recorded more than 1,600 incidents nationwide in the year ending September 2025, several times the annual average seen in the years before Oct. 7, 2023, the Hamas attack on Israel that began the two-year war in Gaza. The previous year saw a record high of over 2,000 incidents.

The incidents span a wide range: abuse directed at visibly Jewish people, threats sent to synagogues and schools, antisemitic graffiti and vandalism, online harassment, and cases of physical violence. Jewish leaders have said the cumulative effect has been a growing and intense sense of vulnerability — even in cities long considered safe for Jewish life.

The report said, “We are now at a stage where anti-Jewish racism has left the fringes of society and become part of the mainstream, where it is normalised and allowed to fester and spread, gaining ground at universities, in arts and culture spaces, in the health sector, in the workplace and elsewhere. In such an environment, Jews have legitimate concerns for their physical safety and future in Australia.”

In Melbourne, an Orthodox synagogue was firebombed in 2024, causing damage and injuring at least one person. In Sydney and Melbourne, Jewish homes, cars and communal buildings have been repeatedly defaced with antisemitic slogans. Jewish students and professionals have reported being harassed or targeted in public spaces and online.

In August, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced that Australian security agencies had concluded that Iran directed at least some of the attacks. The government expelled Iran’s ambassador and designated the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization, calling the attacks “extraordinary and dangerous acts of aggression” carried out on Australian soil.

Police and intelligence officials said the operations were traced to Iranian proxies who sought to disguise Tehran’s involvement. Authorities said Iran was behind at least two major 2024 incidents, including the firebombing of Melbourne’s Adass Israel Synagogue, which caused extensive damage.

Iran condemned the attack on Bondi Beach. “As a matter of principle, Iran condemns the violent attack against civilians in Sydney, Australia,” tweeted a spokesman for its foreign ministry, Esmaeil Baqaei. “Terror violence and mass killing shall be condemned, wherever they’re committed, as unlawful and criminal.”

Iran has a track record of orchestrating attacks on Jewish and Israeli targets abroad and is seen as having been involved in some of the deadliest attacks on Jewish targets that have taken place, including the 1994 bombing of the AMIA Jewish community center in Buenos Aires that killed 85 people.

Bomb threats and hoaxes also punctuated the recent wave of antisemitic incidents. In late 2023 and throughout 2024, synagogues, Jewish schools and community centers in multiple states received bomb threats that prompted lockdowns, canceled events and the deployment of bomb squads. 

The ECAJ has said such hoaxes are included in its incident counts because their purpose is not mischief but intimidation, designed to instill fear, drain security resources and disrupt daily Jewish life regardless of whether explosives are found.

That dynamic came into sharp focus in early 2025, when police discovered what initially appeared to be a serious terror plot involving a vehicle near Sydney that contained explosives and a list of Jewish targets. Authorities later revealed the scheme had been fabricated by organized criminals, rather than ideologically motivated extremists, in an apparent attempt to manipulate law-enforcement responses.

Australian authorities have responded to the surge in antisemitic violence by establishing dedicated counterterrorism and hate-crime task forces and expanding coordination between federal and state agencies. Officials have announced increased patrols around Jewish institutions and additional funding for protective security. These efforts have resulted in charges and arrests against several suspects. 

Israeli leaders have repeatedly condemned antisemitic violence in Australia, framing it as part of a global surge since the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel and accusing the Australian government of failing to do enough to curb the threat.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar echoed that criticism in an online reaction to the Bondi shooting.

“I’m appalled by the murderous shooting attack at a Hanukkah event in Sydney, Australia,” Sa’ar wrote on X. “These are the results of the antisemitic rampage in the streets of Australia over the past two years, with the antisemitic and inciting calls of ‘Globalize the Intifada’ that were realized today. The Australian government, which received countless warning signs, must come to its senses.”