Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese Helped Set the Stage for the Bondi Beach Attack

The attack on Jews at a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, which a Muslim father and his Muslim son carried out, did not appear in a vacuum. Ever since the Hamas attack on October 7, 2023, and Israel’s response — a ground invasion of Gaza — anti-Israel and antisemitic demonstrations and attacks have increased in Australia, and the government of Anthony Albanese has done little to prevent or stop them. Its hostility to Israel helped create the atmosphere in which these attacks on Jews are tolerated, or even approved. More on Prime Minister Albanese’s encouragement of anti-Israel animus, that grades into antisemitism, can be found here: “Hanukkah Terror Has Roots in Australia’s Alienation of Jews,” by Danielle Pletka, Middle East Forum Observer, December 14, 2025:

As Jewish families across Australia celebrated the first night of Hanukkah, shots rang out at Bondi Beach in Sydney. The target was a party, per New South Wales Premier Chris Minns, “[on] the first day of Hanukkah. What should have been a night of peace and joy celebrated in that community with families and supporters, has been shattered by this horrifying evil attack.” The death toll as of this writing is 12, including one shooter. Police identified one of the shooters as Naveed Akram.

Minns’ statement is notable for its contrast with the immediate reaction of Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese. In the aftermath of what was clearly a targeted terrorist attack on Australia’s Jewish community, Albanese released a statement labeling the attacks “shocking and distressing.” Albo, as he is known, was quick to sympathize with “every person affected.” Who was that “every person”? Beachgoers? Surfers? The target was a “Hanukkah by the Sea” celebration of the Jewish festival of lights. But for Albanese, a mention of Jews was one word too many in a seventy-word statement. (He later condemned the attack on the Jewish community.)

The surfacing of Jew-hatred in Australia has been notable, even by international standards.

Here’s the problem: Albanese and his Foreign Minister Penny Wong have done their utmost in the twenty-six months since the October 7, 2023, Hamas attacks on Israel to signal their uninterest in the well-being of Jewish communities, in Israel, Australia, and beyond. Like their political counterparts in Europe and the United States, Laborites in Australia have turned on Israel and Zionists everywhere. And like the fringes of the left in the United States, Spain, England, Canada, and France, they have gone further, aligning themselves with Israel’s enemies.

The surfacing of Jew-hatred in Australia has been notable, even by international standards. Aussie Jews, like much of the world’s Jewish communities, believed the pieties about “never again,” but were rudely awakened when a post-October 7, pro-Palestinian march in Sydney began chanting, “Gas the Jews.” A synagogue was firebombed in Melbourne. The leader of one of Australia’s most prominent Jewish organizations had his former home vandalized and burned in Sydney. Two Sydney nurses were caught on video threatening to kill Jews. Universities have, as in the United States, worked assiduously to isolate Jewish students.

The difference between Australia and, say, the United States, is that the government has played a significant role in the alienation of Jews. As a president of Harvard University might say, it’s all about the context. And under Albanese, the context has been a growing hostility to the State of Israel and its supporters. Australia recently repatriated its own “ISIS brides,” and has welcomed pro-Hamas activists, yet banned supporters of Israel, including former Israeli government ministers.

At the United Nations, where Canberra once voted regularly with the United States on Middle East issues, including Israel, Albo has also hewn a different path. After supporting a series of steps elevating Palestinian status inside the world body, all the while insisting this was not about recognizing a Palestinians state, in November 2024, the Aussie government for the first time voted to support a resolution recognizing the “permanent sovereignty of the Palestinian people in the Occupied Palestinian Territory, including East Jerusalem.”

After further steps breaking with Australia’s pro-Israel history, in September 2025, Canberra recognized a “State of Palestine.” Per Albanese, “This is the world saying that the cycle of violence has to stop.” But Albanese offered few concrete demands about how the “cycle of violence” should stop, insisting only that Hamas could have no role in a future “Palestine,” and that “reform” was needed in the Palestinian Authority….

Albanese did not explain how Hamas would be prevented from having a role in a future state of “Palestine” — something that many observers think only the IDF can do — and he alluded in a vague way to the need for “reform” in the Palestinian Authority, without mentioning that the PA had to end its “Pay-For-Slay” program that rewards past, and incentivizes future, terrorism. Nor did he mention the massive corruption in the PA, beginning at the top, with Mahmoud Abbas and his two sons Yassir and Tareq having accumulated a fortune of more than $100 million by stealing from the money provided by foreign donors.

Notably, I [the author of the article, Danielle Pletka] understand that the prime minister and his foreign minister [Penny Wong] were reluctant to hold Iran accountable for the string of anti-Jewish attacks and were forced into revealing Tehran’s role only when Aussie intelligence threatened to make the revelations itself. In the face of incontrovertible intelligence, Albanese was ultimately forced to expel the Iranian ambassador and then labeled the Iranian Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization.

Albanese and Wong were running interference for the terror-supporting government of Iran. They refused to accuse Iran of being responsible for much of the violence launched against Jews in Australia, and only did so after Australia’s intelligence agency threatened to reveal such information itself. It is unclear why Albanese and Wong wanted to protect Iran, but perhaps they simply did not want to be put in a position where they would have to take strong actions, including ending diplomatic relations, or officially labelling the IRGC a terrorist organizations. They may have feared that in response the Iranians would start to hit other targets, not just Jewish ones, inside Australia.

Both the Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, and his Foreign Minister, Penny Wong, have a history of anti-Israel animus, and of being silent on the role of Islam in the Arab-Israeli conflict. They have been slow in the past to react to antisemitic incidents, including the firebombing at the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne on Dec. 6, 2024, and the role of Iran in these attacks, until the intelligence services pushed him to do so. Albanese has said that Israel’s conduct of the war in Gaza is “quite clearly” a breach of international law, and also “a breach of decent humanity and of morality.”At least he has refrained, until now, of accusing Israel of “genocide.”

Will the Bondi Beach massacre of Jews by two Muslims who had proclaimed their allegiance to ISIS lead Albanese to rethink his failure to properly condemn Hamas, and his failure to adequately protect Australian Jews from their Muslim enemies? In his first statement condemning the Bondi Beach killings, he managed to do so without mentioning the word “Jew.”

A leading Australian Jewish advocate, Dionne Taylor, has declared that Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “has blood on his hands” after the Bondi Beach massacre. She described the terrorist attack as “a transformational watershed moment” for the country. We’ll soon see if in fact Albanese rises to the occasion, or if Australia’s Jews will have to endure the mixture he offers — from indifference to hostility — as before.