Bondi attack: when 'take shelter' becomes instruction

 Bondi sells an Australian fantasy – sun, surf, and the promise that life can be normal. For decades, it also carried a quieter postwar promise: a place where European refugees, including Holocaust survivors, rebuilt ordinary lives. That promise is now under strain.

At a Hanukkah event in Bondi, Sydney’s most recognizably Jewish suburb, the instruction issued was not “celebrate,” but “take shelter.”

Bondi did not suddenly change. It was simply late to the reckoning. The tone was set in Sydney within hours of October 7, in the most iconic public space imaginable.

Within 48 hours of the Hamas massacre, protests erupted at the Sydney Opera House forecourt. NSW Police later confirmed that chants of “where’s the Jews” were heard, alongside other explicitly anti-Jewish language. Even on the most careful legal reading, “Where’s the Jews?” is not political critique or confusion. It is a call for identification. Not Israel. Not policy. Jews.

Instead of being treated as a civic fire alarm – incitement is incitement – the response was diluted into a forensic debate over what was “technically” said, as if antisemitism only counts when it arrives packaged in a court-approved slogan.

The lesson became clearer the next day. Police defended the arrest of a man holding an Israeli flag, explaining it was “for his own safety.” While Israel was still counting its dead, the operational solution was painfully familiar: accommodate the crowd, manage the Jew. The situation was “de-escalated.”

This was not a one-off failure. It was instruction. This is how a permission structure is built – not through a single policy decision, but through repeated signals that Jewish presence is the variable to be controlled.

When failure becomes policy

Australia since October 7 is not a mood. It is a data set. Antisemitism did not merely rise; it spiked. Over 2,000 anti-Jewish incidents have been recorded in the past two years. Abuse, harassment, vandalism, and graffiti – not only online but also in the streets where people live. The slow, grinding pressure that changes how people move through public space, what they wear, and what they stop doing openly.

So when Jews are told, “What you’re feeling is fear,” the answer is no. It is pattern recognition.

The Australian government will point to measures taken. Hamas is designated a terrorist organization. Federal police launched a dedicated task force. There have been condemnations and enforcement mechanisms.

But atmospheres are not detoxed by task forces alone. Australia’s posture toward Israel internationally has not helped the domestic climate.

When political leaders repeatedly adopt UN framing that singles out Israel, it may be presented as balance, but it lands in a culture where “anti-Zionism” already functions as a socially acceptable stand-in for “anti-Jewish.” You do not have to endorse hatred to enable it. You simply have to keep signaling that Israel is uniquely illegitimate and then act surprised when that signal is translated on the street.

Layer onto this a moral framework that sorts the world into oppressors and oppressed, assigns empathy by category, and files Jews as “strong” – therefore fair game. Replace “Jew” with “Zionist,” and pretend the distinction holds.

When leaders speak one language in international forums and tolerate another at home, the public learns quickly. Permission is never announced. It is taught. That is what the “take shelter” instruction really signifies. Not only that security failed, but also that the public square has been conditioned to treat Jewish visibility as negotiable.

Hanukkah is not a private holiday. It is built around public light. We place the menorah in a window. We go outside. We say: we are here.

That is what the permission structure is trying to break: the simple, stubborn decision to be Jewish in public.