Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese is facing intense scrutiny for his handling of antisemitic incidents leading up to the Bondi Beach massacre and his subsequent response.
The National Cabinet pledged Monday to “eradicate anti-Semitism, hate, violence and terrorism,” pass gun law reform, and provide additional funding for Jewish security programs after the weekend massacre at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach that killed at least 15 and left at least another 40 wounded.
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Critics say it’s all too little, too late.
Ben Cohen, a senior analyst specializing in “global antisemitism” at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, talked to the Washington Examiner about what he called an “extraordinary surge of anti-Semitic sentiment over the last two years” and perceived inaction from the government.
“I think that yesterday’s attack was a milestone. Not just because of the number of people that were killed, but because this was something that Australian Jews, Australian Jewish leaders have been actively warning about for the last two years, saying that the country was ripe for a kind of mass atrocity incident like this one,” Cohen explained.
The surge in antisemitic incidents in Australia since Oct. 7, 2023, has been well-documented. Thousands of incidents have been reported, including hateful graffiti, doxxing campaigns, and threats to Jewish leaders.
The most notable incidents include two separate acts of terrorism believed to have been tied to the Iranian government.
In the span of less than two months in late 2024, a kosher restaurant was set ablaze in an arson attack, and a synagogue was firebombed. The former happened just blocks away from this weekend’s massacre.
“The net effect has essentially been that the Jews are asking, ‘Do we have a place here anymore? Are we wanted here? Can the government protect us? Are we able to send our children to school, daycare centers, to attend synagogues, to attend Hanukkah parties?’” Cohen told the Washington Examiner. “Are we going to be able to do that without fear? Or, if we stay here, is the only option for us to basically live under our armed guard, to be in a kind of gilded cage?”
Albanese picked South African lawyer Jillian Segal to serve as his Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism in 2024 amid rising concerns within the community that post-Oct. 7 tensions could boil over into widespread violence.
Segal’s team issued a report earlier this year identifying a 300% increase in antisemitic incidents since Oct. 7 and recommending a series of actions that could reorient police, media, and other national institutions to combat the threat.
A comprehensive implementation of that review’s recommendations never materialized.
“It has sat on [the prime minister’s] desk,” former Australian treasurer Josh Frydenberg told the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. “If that is not a metaphor for the failure of government to act with the urgency that we need, I don’t know what is.”
Right-wing critics of the Albanese government have also accused the prime minister of being unwilling to address Islamism as a root cause of the violence directly.
“The individuals responsible were not simply ‘troubled’ or ‘isolated’, they were driven by a hateful ideology that has no place in this country,” New South Wales Sen. Sean Bell wrote in a public letter following the shooting. “They left behind an Islamic State flag. They murdered 15 innocent Australians and injured 40 more.”
Bell is a member of One Nation, a small right-wing party in the Australian parliament with just four senators. It currently polls in a distant fourth place behind the Australian Labor Party, the Liberal–National Coalition, and the Australian Greens.
The senator proposed mass deportations of foreign nationals and dual citizens who are found to be sympathetic to radical Islamism, not unlike deportations carried out by President Donald Trump’s administration against proponents of antisemitism.
“Anyone who sympathizes with radical Islamic terrorism must be detained and, if not Australian citizens, swiftly deported to protect the safety of Australians,” the letter, which was shared by One Nation on social media, stated. “Dual nationals who support radical Islamic terrorism must have their Australian citizenship stripped, and they must then be swiftly deported.”
Albanese said Monday that what is required of him following the massacre is to “bring the nation together” and “promote unity” against “what the terrorists seek, which is to divide us as a nation, to pit Australian against Australian.”
“We are a great nation, and we are not going to allow anyone, let alone these terrorists, to divide us,” Albanese said. “What we will do is we will unite, we will work together, we will continue to overcome antisemitism, and we will continue to oppose terrorism.”
The Australian leader is also feeling pressure on an international level after being denounced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on Sunday.
Netanyahu accused the Australian leader and his government of “promoting and encouraging antisemitism in Australia” by failing to address radicalism embedded in the pro-Palestine movement.
“Your government did nothing to stop the spread of antisemitism in Australia. You did nothing to curb the cancer cells that were growing inside your country. You took no action, you let the disease spread, and the result is the horrific attacks on Jews we saw today,” Netanyahu said.
The Israeli leader specifically claimed that Australia’s recognition of a Palestinian state earlier this year played into the hands of antisemitic actors — an accusation that Albanese dismissed in the Monday interview.
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“Overwhelmingly, most of the world recognizes a two-state solution as being the way forward in the Middle East,” Albanese told ABC.
Of the two attackers, only the son remains alive after both were shot by responding police. He remains in critical condition.
