{"id":193793,"date":"2025-12-16T06:46:42","date_gmt":"2025-12-16T06:46:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/tsunami-of-anti-jewish-hate-bondi-beach-shooting-stokes-fear-usa-today\/"},"modified":"2025-12-16T06:46:42","modified_gmt":"2025-12-16T06:46:42","slug":"tsunami-of-anti-jewish-hate-bondi-beach-shooting-stokes-fear-usa-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/tsunami-of-anti-jewish-hate-bondi-beach-shooting-stokes-fear-usa-today\/","title":{"rendered":"'Tsunami of anti-Jewish hate.' Bondi Beach shooting stokes fear – USA Today"},"content":{"rendered":"

On a popular beach in Australia, the darkness of antisemitism intruded on the Festival of Light.\u00a0
Instead of celebrating a Jewish holiday, Jews were slaughtered.
For the second time in two months, Jewish people on opposite sides of the world were targeted and attacked on a major religious holiday.
On Oct. 2, two men were killed in an attack at a synagogue in Manchester, England<\/a>, during Yom Kippur, the holiest day of the year. On Sunday, Dec. 14, at least 15 people were killed<\/a> and dozens of others were wounded when two gunmen opened fire on a crowd of about 1,000 gathered on the sweeping white sands of Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, for an event marking the beginning of eight-day Hanukkah festival. Australian authorities labeled the shooting a terrorist attack.
One of the gunmen has since died, bringing the death toll to 16 people.
The attacks mark the latest escalation in an antisemitism epidemic that has worried the heads of the seven largest Jewish communities since Hamas\u2019 assault on Jews in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, during the Simchat Torah holiday.\u00a0
Antisemitism has been on the rise all over the world since the start of the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza<\/a>. The New York-based Anti-Defamation League<\/a> reported in January that nearly half of the world\u2019s adult population \u2013 an estimated 2.2 billion people \u2013 harbors deeply entranced antisemitic attitudes.
\u201cHere in the U.S. and around the world, we\u2019ve been seeing a tsunami of anti-Jewish hate in the past two years, especially post-Oct. 7, 2023,\u201d said Marina Rosenberg, the Anti-Defamation League\u2019s senior vice president for international affairs.
In Australia, the spike in hate directed at Jews has been so alarming that, just a week before the shooting, a group of Jewish leaders representing the United States, Canada, France, Britain, Germany, Argentina and Australia convened in Australia. The countries are home to the largest Jewish populations in the diaspora, known as the J7.
\u201cWe chose to go all the way to Australia because we are so concerned about the rise of antisemitism there,\u201d said Rosenberg, who attended the meetings.
William Daroff, who took part in last week\u2019s gathering, was on a plane heading home when he learned of the shooting. He was about 10 hours into a nearly 15-hour flight from Sydney to Houston when he got the first news alert. Friends started texting him to make sure he was OK.
Daroff, chief executive officer of the Council of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, later learned that a friend who was at the event was wounded by a bullet that grazed his ear. Eli Schlanger, assistant rabbi at Chabad of Bondi and a key organizer of the event, was among those killed.
This year alone, 1,654 incidents targeting the Jewish community have been reported in Australia, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Last year, there were 2,062. For comparison, just 495 cases were reported in 2023 and 478 in 2022.
Jewish leaders in Australia have been warning the government for months that tragedy was going to strike unless they did something to prevent it, Joel Burnie, executive manager at the Australia, Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, said during a phone interview from Melbourne.
\u201cThis event was entirely avoidable,\u201d Burnie said of the shooting, \u201cand it was avoidable through stern and strong leadership, which, unfortunately, there is a clear vacuum of in this country.\u201d
The leaders that attended the J7 meeting want members of Australia\u2019s Jewish community to know they\u2019re not alone, Rosenberg of the ADL said, and to call on the Australian government to do a better job of addressing the rise of anti-Jewish hatred.
Last year, the Australian government appointed a special envoy, Jillian Segal, to look into ways to combat antisemitism. Segal issued her report in June and made 49 recommendations, but the government has yet to act on them.
\u201cI think that tells you everything you need to know about the position of this current government,\u201d Burnie said.
Earlier this year, The New York Times reported that Australia severed ties with Iran and expelled its diplomats<\/a> accusing the country of directing attacks against a Jewish business in Sydney and a Melbourne synagogue.
While they were in Australia, Daroff and other Jewish leaders stayed about three blocks from Bondi Beach, where the attack occurred. Last weekend, Daroff and others had lunch with Schlanger at the home of the rabbi\u2019s father.
The shooting hit close to home, he said, because it happened at the start of Hanukkah, when Jewish people light candles to commemorate the miracle of the oil that burned for eight days in the Second Temple. Each night, a candle is added to a menorah, symbolizing the power of light over darkness.
\u201cThere will be these Hanukkah lightings all around the world,\u201d Daroff said. \u201cEvery Jew around the world feels any one of us could have been in that crowd at that menorah lighting (in Australia) or at any Jewish event anywhere in the world.\u201d
In the United States, Jews were the target of more than 9,300 incidents<\/a> last year, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Two high-profile attacks occurred this year. Two young Israeli embassy staffers<\/a> were fatally shot outside the Capital Jewish Museum in Washington in May. In Boulder, Colorado, a man armed with flamethrower and molotov cocktails attacked a Jewish group<\/a> participating in a \u201cRun for Their Lives\u201d solidarity walk in June for hostages taken by Hamas in Israel.
On Dec. 13 a resident of Redlands, California said his family was attacked by a drive-by shooter who aimed fire<\/a> at his house that was decorated for Hanukkah. Police are investigating.
Ted Deutch, chief executive officer of the American Jewish Committee, said the attacks in England, Australia and the United States all have a common thread. They occurred \u201cagainst the Jewish community at a moment when they were being proud Jews,\u201d he said.
\u201cWhat angers us most \u2013 and should anger everyone in society \u2013 is that these are attacks against Jews for being Jews,\u201d Deutch added. \u201cIn every instance, it was about attacking the Jewish community. No group should ever be targeted because of who they are, and that\u2019s what we\u2019ve been enduring time after time.\u201d
Rosenberg said Jews all over the world are concerned for their safety after the attack in Sydney and other cities, and many are wondering whether they want to attend public Hanukkah festivities. Police in cities in the United States and all over the world are taking more measures to protect the Jewish community at such events.
\u201cIt\u2019s the right thing to do,\u201d Rosenberg said, \u201cbut we need to get to a place where Jews will not need armed protection just to celebrate their holidays.\u201d
Despite everything that has happened, Jews need to continue to celebrate Judaism as much as possible, just like any other religion or minority, she said.
\u201cWe cannot allow antisemitism to define us, and we cannot allow fear to extinguish our light,\u201d Rosenberg said.
Even so, she, like others, is taking precautions.
This year, there will be no \u201cHappy Hanukkah\u201d signs outside her home.
Michael Collins writes about the intersection of politics and culture. A veteran reporter, he has covered the White House and Congress. Follow him on X: @mcollinsNEWS<\/em><\/p>\n

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On a popular beach in Australia, the darkness of antisemitism intruded on the Festival of Light.\u00a0Instead of celebrating a Jewish holiday, Jews were slaughtered.For the second time in two months, Jewish people on opposite sides of the world were targeted and attacked on a major religious holiday.On Oct. 2, two men were killed in an […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":193794,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-193793","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-world","8":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193793","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=193793"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/193793\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/193794"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=193793"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=193793"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quixnet.net\/wpinstance\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=193793"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}