Bondi Beach massacre still reverberating among Australian Jews

Australia’s 115,000 Jews remain anguished and traumatized more than two months after 15 Jews were massacred at Bondi Beach in Sydney at a Chabad party to light the first Chanukah candle.

Yet the co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), the country’s main Jewish community advocacy group, said in an interview said the attack was a foreseeable consequence of a growing surge of anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate and violence going back to Oct. 7, 2023 and spreading worldwide ever since.

“This could just as easily have happened in Toronto, or New York, or London,” Alex Ryvchin said in a telephone interview.

“The same elements are there.”

Canada “probably knows what we’re going through better than anybody,” Ryvchin said. “Canada is experiencing the same sharp decline in personal and physical safety” dating back to Oct. 7, 2023, when kibbutzim near Gaza were overrun by terrorists who brutally slaughtered 1,200 Israelis.

The Bondi Beach massacre of Dec. 14, 2025 was the first-ever fatal attack on Australian Jews, the country’s worst terrorist attack ever, as well as its most deadly mass shooting since 1996.

Ryvchin, who is a 42-year-old married father of three, author, and sought-after media commentator, is certain that Islamic State-inspired terrorists linked to the Iranian regime committed the attack, perhaps because Sydney, part of Australia’a New South Wales state, was perceived as a “soft target, an easy target.”

Two gunmen–a father and son—were reportedly responsible for the massacre, the father killed by authorities at the beach, the son sill awaiting trial.

Ryvchin noted that the Chanukah beach party—dubbed “Chanukah by the Sea” —had been organized successfully by Chabad for some 20 years without incident, with himself an active participant almost every year except for 2025 because of a family obligation.

“There are 50,000 Jews in Sydney, and 1,000 were there,” Ryvchin said. “Everyone knows someone who was killed or severely injured, so it’ s really affected us in a profound way.

“There was just overwhelming despair, grief, and sadness” after the massacre, Ryvchin said.

Among the 15 who perished on the beach was Chabad Rabbi Eli Schlanger, a personal close friend of Ryvchin’s and the Jewish community as a whole, who organized the event.

Rabbi Schlanger, Ryvchin noted, was due to take part in his daughter’s upcoming Bat Mitzvah, “so it’s just a profound sense of grief and loss.”

But the immediate feelings of sorrow and shock gave way to anger over the fact that “we were allowed to get to this point,” Ryvchin said.

“For two years we had been warning the government and the public about what was happening, day by day, step by step, and it was still allowed to happen.”

In the two years after Oct. 7 and before Bondi Beach, incidents have included the serious firebombing of a synagogue in Melbourne and a kosher delicatessen (also at Bondi), other firebombings, vandalism of offices of Jewish MPs, and almost-palpable, “soaring levels” of anti-Semitism and anti-Israel rhetoric in the public square.

“It was predictable that things would escalate to murder and that’s where we are now,” Ryvchin said.

The community trauma since the massacre has been profound and painful.

“It’s so deeply personal,” Ryvchin said. “I go to my synagogue now and you look around and there are empty seats where people who were murdered used to sit. You look up at the women’s gallery and there are widows sitting there now and empty chairs for the women who were massacred.”

“The people who are gone were the heart and soul of the community and now they are gone.”

Ryvchin said the Bondi Beach massacre has resulted in efforts to pass new local and federal laws banning hate speech, slogans, displays of terrorist flags, and the like. The federal government also plans to launch a Royal Commission on these issues.

They are worthy endeavors, Ryvchin thinks, but “look, that’s the impact of terrorism. Terrorism changes society. It makes governments pass laws to restore safety, and if not safety, at least the perception of safety. »

“I think those stem from the realization that this (Bondi) wasn’t just a spontaneous attack. It was the product of a long process of radicalization and incitement. »

As for the planned Royal Commission, Ryvchin said, “I think it’s very important. There needs to be a period of truth-telling, of reckoning, that we look at how we got here. How the warnings were ignored, how anti-Semitism was allowed to take root in different institutions in society and become normalized. »

“I hope it will lead to period where Jewish people will feel heard and safe in this country, where they can talk about their experiences and can be truly heard and seen. »

As for the legacy of the Bondi Beach massacre, the Jewish community will survive, but with permanent scars.

“I mean it’s changed, the country’s been transformed,” Ryvchin said. “You don’t come back from this unchanged.”