'Sadly, Last Night They Found the Jews': Community Leaders Condemn Bondi Beach Massacre
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Two years ago, anti-Semites gathered on the forecourt of the Sydney Opera House chanting “F the Jews” and “where are the Jews,” a leader of Australia’s Jewish community said. On the first night of Hanukkah, at Bondi Beach, they got their answer.
“Sadly, last night they found the Jews,” Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told reporters at the scene of the massacre that killed 15 people and left dozens hospitalised.
Ryvchin drew a direct line between years of unchecked anti-Semitic rhetoric and the terror attack that shattered a 30-year community tradition.
“For two years, people have paraded in our streets and universities calling for the Intifada to be globalised,” Ryvchin said. “A catchphrase which means kill Jews wherever you find them. Last night, the Intifada was globalised and came to Bondi.”
Standing near the beach where families had gathered hours earlier for the annual Hanukkah by the Sea celebration, Ryvchin and David Ossip, president of the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, delivered an unflinching assessment of what they described as a preventable tragedy and a colossal failure of leadership.
“The time for talk is over,” Ryvchin said. “We need action.”
‘The Very Best of Us’
Ossip spoke of a community “ripped apart” and paid tribute to one of the victims, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, whom he described as a dear friend.
“Anyone who knew him knew that he was the very best of us,” Ossip said. “This is a person who rose each day with a simple mission of doing good, whatever good he could find, whatever kind deeds he could perform.”
Ossip described a rabbi who drove to regional prisons to sit with inmates and listen to their stories, who visited elderly residents in public housing in Waterloo and Redfern daily to ensure they had meals and kosher products in their homes.
“He was a person who illuminated our lives with his kindness, with his grace, with his generosity,” Ossip said. “And there is no replacing him. There is none like him.”
Ossip had held Schlanger’s newborn baby just four weeks ago at the synagogue the rabbi had built.
“I don’t want to speak of his legacy and what we should do in his honour,” Ossip said. “It’s too early for that.”
The victims ranged from 10-year-old Matilda, the youngest, to an 87-year-old man, the oldest. Dozens remain in hospital, many in critical condition.
Just In : Jewish Leaders Blame Unchecked Anti-Semitism for Bondi Beach Massacre
Leaders of Australia’s Jewish community blamed years of unchecked anti-Semitism for the terrorist attack that killed 15 people at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, drawing a direct line between hateful rhetoric and the massacre.
‘A Family of Families’
Ossip described the Jewish community as “a family of families” that had suffered “an almighty blow from which I fear we will never recover.”
“Our family was ripped apart. Our family has been shredded,” he said.
The Hanukkah by the Sea event had run for 30 years and was, in Ossip’s words, “the jewel in the crown of our communal calendar.”
“It’s when we got together at the beginning of the Hanukkah festival, at the beginning of the summer, and we rejoiced as a family, as one great collective family,” he said.
Instead, thousands of people were subjected to terror on what should have been a carefree summer evening.
“Children mowed down by gunfire, fathers and mothers being felled by bullets, the elderly having to take shelter behind trees,” Ryvchin said. “Lives shattered irrevocably in a single moment.”
ASIO Examined Gunmen Six Years Ago
Asked about reports that the gunmen had links to Islamic State and had been examined by ASIO six years ago, Ryvchin said he was not surprised.
“What happened here, as I said, wasn’t isolated,” he said. “It was the product of an ideology, an ideology that was allowed to fester in segments of this society, incited by clerics in certain cases, by propagandists, by politicians even in certain cases.”
Ryvchin expressed faith in Australia’s security agencies but acknowledged clear failures.
“Our security agencies are made up of incredible men and women who get up every day with the sole mission of protecting Australians,” he said. “We have absolute faith in them. But there are failures, clearly.”
He pointed to the synagogue firebombings that were not detected or disrupted before they occurred.
“And as we see here, there was no ability to identify these individuals, to see that they were on the cusp of mass terror,” Ryvchin said. “And the consequence is body bags by the sand.”
‘Anti-Semitism Has Found a Place’
Ryvchin rejected the notion that anti-Semitism had no place in Australia, a phrase often repeated by politicians over the past two years.
“Yesterday should have finally made it clear that anti-Semitism has well and truly found a place here in our beloved country,” he said.
He described a pattern that Jewish communities have witnessed throughout history.
“What we’ve seen has been the logical progression, demonizing Jews with rhetoric, which slowly builds up to acts of violence, and then acts of violence which last night took life,” Ryvchin said.
“When antisemitism takes root in a society, it’s not a passing hatred and idle bigotry,” he said. “It becomes a quest, a mission, it becomes an obsession, which leads people to do the most inhuman acts.”
Ryvchin said the Jewish community had tried to educate Australian leaders about where such hatred leads.
“We know this, and we sought to educate the leaders of this country, wider society, because we know where this leads,” he said. “We know how it rips the country apart. And frankly, we won’t listen to it.”
‘Something to Be Feared’
Speaking directly to Jewish Australians watching at home, Ryvchin acknowledged their fear was justified.
“There is something to be feared here,” he said. “When we can’t go to the beach and mark Hanukkah in public as we have for 30 years without being mowed down like animals, there is something to be feared.”
Ryvchin described a conversation with his 12-year-old daughter the night of the attack.
“Last night I was having conversations with my 12-year-old daughter who was petrified,” he said. “And I was not going to deceive her or lie to her, and I don’t deceive the community.”
He called on the Australian public to recognise what the country had become.
“What I ask the Australian people to do is to look at what we have become, look at what has been allowed to happen to this country, the greatest country on earth, where we stand here and gather at a scene of carnage at Bondi Beach, where people gathered, families gathered to mark a religious day,” Ryvchin said.
“We have to ensure that anti-Semitism ceases to be an acceptable, plausible form of intolerance,” he said. “It is not. It is the worst, gutter form of hatred and leads to the greatest of carnage.”
‘We Will Prevail’
Despite the devastation, both leaders spoke of resilience and the obligation to continue.
Ossip said Rabbi Schlanger would have urged the community to fight on.
“He would want us to celebrate Jewish life. That’s all he lived for,” Ossip said. “To be proud and open as a Jew, to wear his kippah, to lay tefillin in public.”
“When the time comes, we will stand upright again as Jews and we will prevail,” Ossip said. “One thing that our history has shown is that those who seek to smash our people, defeat our people, wither and fall by the wayside, whereas we will prevail.”
The second night of Hanukkah falls tonight. Ryvchin said the community would light candles as obligated, to show the victory of light over darkness.
“But at the moment, it’s hollow to say that, because darkness has prevailed,” he said. “The worlds of our community have been destroyed, but we have to rebuild them.”
Ryvchin ended with a message for those who carried out the attack.
“If Jewish life is allowed to wither, it is a victory for the savages that carried out the slaughter,” he said. “We will not let that happen.”
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