OPINION 

On Sunday night, as families gathered on the iconic Bondi Beach, Sydney, to light Hanukkah candles, symbols of resilience, faith, and defiance against darkness, at least eleven people were murdered in cold blood.

A Hanukkah lighting ceremony, of all places, became the scene of one of the most horrific anti-Semitic terror attacks in Australian history.

It was not random, and it did not come out of nowhere.

The candles were meant to recall a moment in Jewish history when a small, persecuted people refused to surrender their identity.

Instead, the sand of Bondi Beach became soaked with blood.

This was not just an attack on Jews; it was an attack on Australia's promise that people can live openly, freely, and safely as who they are.

What makes this massacre even more unbearable is that it completes a promise that has been written across Australia for the past two years, spray-painted on synagogue walls, etched into burned prayer halls, scrawled across vandalized kosher restaurants, and shouted at Jews in the street.

On Sunday night, that promise was finished in blood.

And yet, astonishingly, we are still being told, by police, by officials, by commentators, that the problem undefined or is being misunderstood.

Only months after the Oct. 7, 2023 massacre, when Israelis were butchered, raped, and kidnapped, a march near the Sydney Opera House was widely reported to have included chants of "Gas the Jews."

The phrase was condemned around the world because it evoked the most industrialized mass murder in human history.

New South Wales police subsequently stated that an independent investigation found "overwhelming certainty" that the chant was not "Gas the Jews," but "Where's the Jews?"

—As if that settles anything.
—As if this distinction is meaningful.
—As if one chant is merely unfortunate while the other is not a threat at all.

"Where's the Jews?" is a hunting call, a cry for Jewish blood.

It's what mobs ask before windows are smashed, before synagogues are torched, before bodies are counted.

Jews, perhaps uniquely in history, know exactly what that question precedes.

We have heard it in different languages, with different accents, in different centuries, and it has always led to the same places.

Australia is sadly now no exception.

Over the past two years, Jewish Australians have watched their synagogues burned, their schools placed under guard, their restaurants attacked, their children told to hide their identity.

They've been assaulted, threatened, and harassed for the crime of being Jewish, often by people claiming to be engaged in "political protest."

The message sent by those who remained quiet or tried to contextualize has been consistent: Jews are legitimate targets.

Sunday night proved that message was received.

The obsession with forensic linguistic hair-splitting — did they say "Gas" or “Where?” —has become a grotesque substitute for moral clarity.

It allows leaders, parliaments and institutions to reassure themselves that the situation is "complex," that passions are "high on all sides," that nothing definitive can be concluded.

Meanwhile, Jews bury their dead.

Antisemitism today does not always wear a swastika.

More often than not, today, it waves a flag.

Sometimes it marches under the banner of human rights.

Sometimes it insists, with perfect sincerity, that it's only asking questions.

However, when Jews are hunted, burned out, and finally murdered at a religious ceremony on a public beach, the mask falls away.

Hanukkah is the story of light pushed back against overwhelming darkness.

It's about refusing to surrender to intimidation, even when the cost is high.

The victims at Bondi Beach were doing exactly that: living openly as Jews, lighting candles in public, believing, perhaps hoping, that Australia was still a place where this was safe.

Their murder is a warning written in the clearest possible language.

Not in slogans. Not in chants. In blood.

The Australian authorities now face a stark choice.

It can continue to minimize, contextualize, and relativize antisemitism until each new atrocity is treated as an isolated shock.

Or it can finally acknowledge what Jewish Australians have been saying all along: when calls to find Jews are tolerated, Jews will be found, and eventually, they will be killed.

The candles on Bondi Beach were meant to shine against the darkness.

Instead, they now illuminate a truth the country can no longer afford to ignore.

Sacha Roytman is CEO of the Combat Antisemitism Movement, a global coalition uniting more than 950 partner organizations and hundreds of thousands of individuals across diverse backgrounds to fight antisemitism in all its forms.