On Bondi Beach

I arrived in Sydney on April 10, 2017. My photos library date stamp indicates that I visited the iconic Bondi Beach by April 15. It’s gorgeous without the people (photos below), and there is a well-worn walk up and down the coast, most famously to Coogee, the next large beach down the Ocean, with some smaller ones in between.

We have been there a few times since, but it’s not a regular destination for us because it’s not on a train line, despite past proposals and opportunities, a long sad story of NIMBYism. Nevertheless the 333 Bus between Bondi and the City is the most popular in the city, and their weekends will see long lines to board at Bondi.

In any case my family and I were not there, on the night in question, and I didn’t find out until probably an hour after it started. My daughter got a text, and whispered it to me since we had company over, and didn’t want to be a total downer. I discretely checked the news — headlines reported 2 shot dead at Bondi and many injured.

At first the news was incomplete, as it tends to be. In the first minutes from hearing the announcement you are wondering if this is regular gangland warfare (this has been a running theme in Sydney) or a crazy person, as with the stabbings in 2024at nearby Bondi Junction, or organised terror. Then, if the latter, whether it’s regular ole’ terrorism or the very specialised terrorists who would like to kill me because of the sequence of my amino acids, rather than anything I personally, or Australia for that matter, have done to them. And then, when you realise which of the above holds, you wonder which of the many antisemitic groups did this: was it the left-wing nut jobs, the right-wing nut jobs, or the super-religious Islamic nut jobs. Well now we know the answer. We now have a sense of the magnitude, as of this writing 15 innocent victims dead, one gunman dead, 22 people (including one shooter) still in hospital. All Jews, regardless of religious preference, feel the pain. All Australians feel the pain. I suppose that was the intent.

This Bondi ‘Chanukah by the Sea‘ celebration was not some generic Jewish event, we don’t organise that way. There is no recognised Jewish Pope or Ayatollah or Dalai Lama. As the expression goes, you put ten of us in a room you get eleven opinions. It only takes 10 men to form a minyan. Factionalism has long been an issue (read the Bible, or watch Life of Brian, based on a true story I am told), in fact the events around the splits between traditionalist/purist Jews (the Hasmoneans/Maccabees and allies) led by the Maccabees and the Hellenised/assimilationist Jews (who aligned with Greek culture and, at times, Seleucid power) is what Chanukah is really about, but it’s a festival of lights near the Winter Solstice when it is dark in the northern hemisphere, and usually near the birthday of the world’s most famous Jew, which we do not celebrate, but for which all the neighbouring non-Jewish (and even non-Christian, non-Jewish) children get presents, so there is a holiday). There are lots of groups that identify as Jewish, some of whom are recognised as Jewish by the others, some less so. Arguably all the monotheistic religions are part of the same family tree. Families fight from time to time (or always).

But this was specifically a Chabad event. Chabad is more outreach-focused than most other Jewish groups, is more visually identifiable, and thus targeted, and has somewhat distinct beliefs. One of their tenets places Chabad among the Jewish movements that are non-Zionist in outlook, unlike the older mainstream groups that linked faith more closely with political Zionism. Importantly they are based in Brooklyn, New York not the Middle East. These are pretty close to the opposite of the people the nut jobs are actually angry at.

All of my social media follows who dismissed and denied Jewish groups warnings of rising antisemitism as some form of whinging or special pleading after October 7 have long been unfollowed, blocked, and muted.

Thank you to those who reached out and checked on our welfare.

I believe the inevitable inquest will, like most terrorist-identification failures beforehand, ultimately show that the dots were not connected. Australia’s leaders mostly paid lip service while the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO, Australia’s CIA, with some FBI thrown in) have had adequate warning, but obviously failed in connecting those dots. This will be used to increase their power and reduce our freedoms. Peter Theil’s Palantir Technologies, or someone like them, will get a huge contract.

Yes the terrorists, and antisemites more broadly, are both evil and stupid, while their shouty sympathisers, and their shouty sympathisers’ appeasers, who allowed camps to be set up on campuses for months on end, have not showered themselves in glory, and a few resignations all around would have been in order.

We did have an act of heroism, all praise to Ahmad al-Ahmad, and hopes for his speedy recovery. Rest-in-peace Reuven Morrison, who through the rock, and Boris and Sofia Gurman. The neighbourhood of Bondi itself is much more Jewish, in particular Russian-Jewish, than the rest of Sydney. So these heroic victims were not necessarily even going to the event.

Sydney will reclaim Bondi Beach. Beachgoers in bikinis and budgie smugglers will return after a suitable time has passed. Lifeguards can resume their normal duties of protecting people from drowning and sharks. A permanent memorial will be built. It will be vandalised by some of those shouty sympathisers at some regular cadence. We will not have Peace in the Middle East.

NEXT YEAR IN BONDI.

Next year’s Chanukah by the Sea will be “lit” in some but not all meanings of the word. Many of those shouty sympathisers will attend, most will even be respectful. There will be lots more police this time next year.

The only saving grace is that, unlike the US, gun laws will change, and perhaps gun ownership will be measurably restricted. Perhaps people will need to get relicensed every few years, and new background checks will be done. Perhaps gun owners will have to store their guns at the gun club. Perhaps non-citizens won’t be permitted to get guns. It won’t solve the problem, but will reduce it, and maybe some innocent lives will be saved. We will never know which ones.

—- (((Transportist)))