A Chanukah attack in Sydney sends shockwaves across the Jewish world
Sunday should have been a day of celebration. For the organizers of the event known as Chanukah by the Sea, at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, it meant moving from one festive moment to the next; after the intense days surrounding the 19th of Kislev, the long-anticipated communal lighting of the chanukiah was about to begin.
And, as in much of the world, the event carried significance well beyond the immediate circle of the local Beit Chabad. It was an opportunity for thousands of local Jews of all types to celebrate. More than a thousand people attended the gathering organized for the lighting of the first candle. Yet what followed was the opposite of a celebration.
At press time, 16 people are confirmed dead and more than 40 wounded, seven of them in critical condition, in what has been described as the deadliest attack against the Jewish People since the tragic events of October 7, 2023. It came against a backdrop of other frightening eruptions of anti-Jewish hate around the world. A Chanukah event in Amsterdam was mobbed by angry masked protesters, a Jewish family in California had a gun fired at their home, and there were online reports that a shooting at Brown University may have targeted a Jewish professor.
The Bondi Beach perpetrators were identified as a Muslim father and son. The father, 50, was shot dead, while the son, 24 — a man known to local security services for his Islamist affiliations — was arrested by police.
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