More than 1,000 people had gathered on Bondi Beach on a warm day to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah in Australia. In stark contrast to the joyful energy on the beach, a terror plot was underway, allegedly planned in advance by a father and son who opened fire with rifles into the crowd, with an improvised explosive device at the ready in their car.
“This is a targeted attack on Jewish Australians,” said Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese
Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese called Sunday’s mass shooting “a targeted attack on Jewish Australians,” while New South Wales Premier Chris Minns said it was “designed to target Sydney’s Jewish community.”
Police should have been on high alert, given that it was a Hanukkah celebration and antisemitic threats and attacks have skyrocketed in Australia in the wake of the October 7, 2023, Hamas attack on Israel, according to data from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
Yet the two assailants were allegedly able to fire shots toward the beach for more than five minutes, according to eyewitness accounts. Videos show the gunmen taking their time to aim, shoot and then duck from a bridge near the beach. One video shows a good Samaritan jumping on the back of one of the shooters and wrestling his gun away. Local media reported that the man, identified as 43-year-old Ahmed al Ahmed, suffered two gunshot wounds.
“The first initial reaction wasn’t even by police, it was by civilians, which raised a lot of questions about the role of police,” said Oded Ailam, who worked in Israeli intelligence for two decades and reviewed videos of the attack for CBS News.
“Everything points to this being a preplanned attack that was planned for a significant amount of time,” Ailam said. ” The big question now is if Iran and Hezbollah will be implicated.”
Australia earlier this year determined a series of previous arson attacks targeting a synagogue and a Kosher food provider had been directed by Iran, and moved to cut diplomatic ties over the incidents.
“As a matter of principle, Iran condemns the violent attack against civilians in Sydney, Australia,” Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Esmaeil Baqaei said Sunday on social media. “Terror violence and mass killing shall be condemned, wherever they’re committed, as unlawful and criminal.”
When asked by reporters about whether Sunday’s shooting was an intelligence failure, New South Wales officials waved off the questions and said their priority is keeping the community safe.
The alleged assailants were a father and son duo originally from Pakistan, CBS News has learned. They had six firearms — purchased legally — and had assembled an improvised explosive device to target the Jewish gathering, according to authorities.
While shocking, the attack is not entirely surprising to people who track antisemitic attacks.
Rising antisemitism in Australia
Australia has been plagued by reports of antisemitic attacks and incidents in the two years following October 7, 2023, according to new figures from the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.
In one particularly notable incident last year, masked assailants conducted an arson attack on the Adass Israel synagogue in Melbourne. Another arson attack was carried out at the kosher food provider Lewis Continental Kitchen in Sydney, also last year.
Both attacks were determined by the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO) to be tied to the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps. In August, Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese expelled Iran’s ambassador, Ahmad Sadeghi, and three other Iranian diplomats, citing the intelligence assessment concluding that Iran directed antisemitic arson attacks on Australian soil.
The ECAJ found antisemitic incidents in Australia remain at historically high levels — almost five times the average annual number before October 7, 2023, which is the largest spike of any J7 country between 2021 and 2024.
J7 refers to the seven countries with the largest Jewish communities outside Israel that form the J7 Task Force Against Antisemitism: the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, France, Germany, Argentina and Australia.
The Task Force met in Sydney less than one week before Sunday’s attack to discuss the growing security threat to the Jewish community in Australia.
“This attack is not only the latest in a disturbing series of antisemitic incidents in Australia but also around the globe, including in the United States,” said Oren Segal, senior vice president of counter-extremism and intelligence at the Anti-Defamation League. “And these incidents are becoming increasingly violent.”