Australia opened public hearings Monday into a Royal Commission examining the Bondi Beach mass shooting and the broader crisis of antisemitism it exposed, as Jewish Australians delivered testimony about a community living with a fear that an 86-year-old Holocaust survivor said he recognized from a period of history he had hoped would never repeat itself.
The attack on a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in December killed 15 people and triggered the national inquiry, which retired judge Virginia Bell is leading. Monday’s first hearings focused on the nature and prevalence of antisemitism in Australia, with witnesses describing a community that has been fundamentally altered by the hostility that surged following the October 2023 outbreak of the Gaza war.
“The sharp spike in antisemitism that we’ve witnessed in Australia has been mirrored in other Western countries and seems clearly linked to events in the Middle East,” Bell said in opening remarks. “It’s important that people understand how quickly those events can prompt ugly displays of hostility towards Jewish Australians simply because they’re Jews.”
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Peter Halasz, who survived the Holocaust and fled Hungary for Australia, told the inquiry that what he was witnessing in his adopted country was not unfamiliar. “What is happening in Australia today is not a faint echo of a distant past,” he said. “For those of us who lived through the 1930s and 1940s, it is something we recognise, and that recognition is frightening and cause for alarm.”
Sheina Gutnick, whose father Reuven Morrison was among those killed in the Bondi attack, described antisemitism as something that had damaged her family’s sense of safety and freedom of movement in ways that extended into the most ordinary decisions of daily life. “As a mother, I’m constantly weighing up the risk of exposing my children to environments where they may be witness, or subject, to antisemitism,” she told the panel. She recounted being called an “effing terrorist” by a stranger at a shopping center because she was wearing a Star of David necklace.
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A woman who gave evidence under the pseudonym AAM told the inquiry her family had decided to leave Australia entirely and relocate to Israel. “We never expected synagogues to be burned down. We never expected Jews to be hunted on Bondi Beach,” she said. “My family and I no longer want to live in Australia. We don’t feel safe here. We don’t feel welcome.”
The testimony from institutional leaders was equally stark. Stefanie Schwartz, president of Sydney Jewish primary school Mount Sinai College, described conducting drills to prepare young children for terrorist attacks and maintaining a security presence she called extreme. “You walk past our school and it looks a lot more like a prison than a primary school,” she said. Benjamin Elton, chief minister of the Great Synagogue in Sydney, said antisemitism had “run riot,” with Jewish Australians being held collectively responsible for the actions of the Israeli government.
The Royal Commission released an interim report last Thursday containing 14 recommendations, calling for greater security at Jewish public events and further reforms to counter-terrorism policy and gun laws. A second block of hearings scheduled for later in May will examine the specific circumstances that led to the Bondi Beach attack and address the questions raised in that interim report.