Bondi Beach in Sydney is meant to be a great place to be: Sun, surf, a boardwalk crowded with runners and tourists. On Sunday night, it became a crime scene.Driving the newsA Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach turned into a massacre on December 14, 2025, when a father and son duo of Pakistani-origin opened fire on a Jewish community event, killing 16 people and wounding dozens more in what authorities are calling “a targeted act of antisemitic terrorism.
As CBS News reported, the attackers - Sajid Akram, 50, and his 24-year-old son Naveed Akram - had ties to Islamic extremist networks. US intelligence sources told CBS that Naveed is a Pakistani national and the pair were linked to a Sydney-based Islamic State cell. The New South Wales Police confirmed that Sajid legally owned six firearms and held a gun license since 2015.The attack - which included the planting of an improvised explosive device that was later defused - has triggered not just national grief, but a global reckoning with how anti-Israel slogans like “Globalize the Intifada” are being weaponized into literal acts of violence.Why it mattersThis was Australia’s deadliest mass shooting since 1996, and the first major terrorist attack on Jews in the country’s modern history.But more broadly, this massacre:Puts global Jewish communities on high alert, showing that antisemitic ideology linked to Israel-Hamas tensions is no longer confined to the Middle East.Validates fears that pro-Palestinian slogans like “Intifada” and “Resistance is justified” are being interpreted as calls to violent action, not political metaphors.
Exposes the fragility of multicultural harmony in liberal democracies like Australia.
The big picture: The beach where politics went physical and deadlyThe scene was very normal until it wasn't. More than a thousand people had gathered along the dunes to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah. During a pleasant "Chanukah by the Sea" event with families, the assassins shot from a raised walkway above Bondi Beach. There were more than 1,000 people in the throng, including families, tourists, kids, and Holocaust survivors. CBS News says that what happened next was a distressing image of bloodstained sand, abandoned strollers, and discarded shoes as lifeguards and spectators dragged injured people on surfboards, which they used as makeshift stretchers. 15 people died in 10 minutes, including a 10-year-old child, two rabbis, a Holocaust survivor, and an Israeli tourist.What followed, according to CBS News, was a disturbing scene of discarded shoes, abandoned strollers, and bloodstained sand as lifeguards and bystanders dragged wounded victims on surfboards, turning them into makeshift stretchers.The Associated Press noted that among the dead were “a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor,” a set of facts that makes the target unmistakable even before ideology is named.But it’s what preceded this attack that experts say can no longer be ignored.As The New York Times’ Bret Stephens argued, “For fanatics who believe the Jewish state is the apotheosis of evil, killing Jews represents a twisted notion of justice - even when the victims are unarmed civilians.”Zoom in: The attackers and their ideologyThe father-son duo came to represent a chilling profile: legal gun owners, community members, and yet deeply radicalized.As CBS News reported, Sajid Akram came to Australia from Pakistan in 1998 on a student visa and legally acquired his firearms. Naveed Akram, Australian-born, had been investigated in 2019 by ASIO, the country's top intelligence agency, due to his associations with known Islamic State sympathizers.
At the time, authorities found “no ongoing threat.”But by Sunday night, that risk had materialized:•Videos posted online showed the pair firing long-barreled rifles across a crowded beach.•Two Islamic State flags were later recovered from their vehicle.•A homemade bomb was found but not detonated.•Naveed was shot and injured during the rampage and is currently in custody.The New South Wales Police Commissioner, Mal Lanyon, said the motivation was “clearly antisemitic,” though officials have dodged direct questions about the attackers’ religion or political affiliations.Heroism amid horrorAmid the terror, one bystander became a national hero.Ahmed al Ahmed, a 43-year-old fruit vendor, physically tackled one of the gunmen and disarmed him. As shown in viral footage and confirmed by AFP, al Ahmed was shot twice in the shoulder during the confrontation. He survived.“The team ran out under fire to try and clear children from the playground,” said Steven Pearce of Surf Life Saving New South Wales, praising lifeguards who ran toward the gunfire.A fundraising page for al Ahmed has raised hundreds of thousands of dollars, and he has become a unifying figure in a nation reeling from division.What they’re sayingAustralian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called it "an act of pure evil, an act of antisemitism, an act of terrorism on our shores”, vowing to tighten gun laws and “eradicate antisemitism together.”But Albanese is facing blowback from Jewish leaders - both domestic and abroad - who say the government had ample warning.“There’s been a heap of inaction,” said Lawrence Stand, a Sydney father who raced into the shooting zone to find his daughter.“We never felt once that they listened,” the Australian Jewish Association posted on Facebook after the attack, according to The New York Times.Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu was blunt in his condemnation: “Your policy is pouring oil on the fire of antisemitism,” he said, referencing Australia’s recent recognition of a Palestinian state.Israel’s President Isaac Herzog called the shooting “a very cruel attack on Jews who went to light the first candle of Hanukkah,” urging Australia to combat the “enormous wave of antisemitism” sweeping the country.French President Emmanuel Macron confirmed that one of the victims was French national Dan Elkayam, a media professional and soccer player living in Sydney.President Donald Trump also weighed in, calling it “a purely antisemitic attack.”What’s next: Laws, lives, and accountabilityGun reform: PM Albanese is calling for an overhaul of Australia’s gun laws, including a limit on the number of firearms any individual can own and a reevaluation of lifelong gun licenses.“People can be radicalized over time. Licenses should not be in perpetuity,” he told AP.Radicalization probes: Australian and international intelligence agencies are now reevaluating how extremists slip through security gaps - particularly within diaspora communities - and whether online and in-person radicalization campaigns are accelerating globally.Security upgrades: Cities including London, Berlin, and New York have increased Jewish community security in response to the Bondi Beach massacre, per Reuters.Between the linesThis wasn’t random. As David Frum wrote in The Atlantic:“Symbolic violence is a rehearsal for actual violence.”The slogans we’ve heard on Western campuses and protests for over a year - “Globalize the Intifada,” “Death to the IDF,” “From the river to the sea” - are not just metaphors.
The New York Times’ Bret Stephens made the point starkly: “On Sunday, those consequences were written in Jewish blood.”The bottom lineAfter Bondi, there are only bad options.Treat protest language as harmless expression, and you risk ignoring what Frum called the need to “take people seriously, believing their words as they are spoken.” Treat slogans as criminal incitement by default, and you risk building a censorship regime that will, inevitably, be applied unevenly and politically.The reality is uglier and more mundane: Most people shouting are not killers, but killers often borrow their language from crowds. The crowd doesn’t need to intend violence for its words to be useful to someone who does."Boulder. Manchester. Washington. And now Sydney. The names of more and more cities around the world are becoming synonymous with deadly attacks against Jews. Stopping these horrors requires immediate, decisive intervention at all levels," Israeli opposition leader Yair Lapid said on X.This is not just an Australian tragedy. It is a wake-up call for everyone.(With inputs from agencies)
