Hanukkah Massacre in Australia: Rising Antisemitism and Anti-Israel Activity
- Ofek Kehila
- Dec 15, 2025
- 3 min read
A fatal antisemitism attack in Bondi Beach, Sydney, saw 15 people killed during a Hanukkah celebration. This comes amid rising antisemitism and anti-Israel activity in Australia.
Hanukkah beach massacre
Two gunmen opened fire during a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach, killing at least 15 people, including four children and two Chabad rabbis; dozens more were injured. Images of victims lying in pools of blood, a massive crowd fleeing in panic, and a bloody tallit circulate the news, reminiscent of past terror attacks and pogroms targeted at Jewish communities around the world.
Roughly 2,000 members of the Australian Jewish community participated in the Hanukkah event. Explosive devices were discovered in a vehicle nearby, suggesting the attack was planned to be even deadlier.
While the investigation into the massacre unfolds, members of the Jewish community, journalists, and world leaders alike are expressing deep concern over rising antisemitism and anti-Israel activity in Australia.
A resident said the attack was expected since “the daily hatred toward Jews here is abnormal.”
Zvika Klein with the Jerusalem Post stressed: “Call it what it is. A mass shooting at a public Hanukkah festival in Bondi Beach is a hate crime. It is antisemitic violence, full stop.”
Israel’s President Isaac Herzog called on the Australian government to “fight against the enormous wave of antisemitism which is plaguing Australian society.”
Spikes in antisemitism and anti-Israel activity
Antisemitism has reached alarming levels in Australia. According to the latest report by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, the past two years have seen a record number of antisemitic incidents. In the previous year alone, there were more than 1,600 anti-Jewish incidents logged by volunteer Community Security Groups.
Some of the major antisemitic events include the arson of a kosher catering business in Bondi (October 2024), cars torched and sprayed with anti-Israel graffiti in a Sydney suburb (November 2024 and January 2025), and a synagogue in Melbourne that was firebombed and burned to the ground (December 2024).
In addition to record-high antisemitism, the report points to the anti-Israel activity carried out in Australia, with weekly protests including anti-Jewish chants and racist placards calling for the end of Israel and equating Nazism and Zionism, as well as many violent incidents. Over the past two years, both Australia and New Zealand have witnessed a surge in pro-Palestinian activism. Just two months ago, thousands attended pro-Palestine rallies across Australia.
Some of the anti-Israel incidents related to the activity of the Free Palestine movement in Australia include physical attacks against local Jewish people while yelling “Fucking Jews” and “Free Palestine” near a synagogue in Melbourne (March 2025); a graffiti of “Hitler on top Allah hu [Akbar]” and “Free Palestine”, joined by a dozen Nazi swastikas, sprayed on the walls of a synagogue in Sydney (January 2025); death threats made by a protestor who yelled “Every child in Palestine was born to come and kill you” at an anti-Israel protest in Melbourne (March 2025); high school students from Gladstone Park Secondary College who chanted “free, free Palestine” with slurs of “dirty Jews” (July 2025), and much more.
Wrap up
According to the ECAJ report, “anti-Jewish racism has left the fringes of society and become part of the mainstream, where it is normalized and allowed to fester and spread.” The increasing ideological alignment and even cooperation between neo-Nazis, the anti-Israel movements, and Islamists have led to violent incidents, peaking with the Hanukkah massacre.
Ofek Kehila (Israel, 1987) is a scholar of Spanish Golden Age literature and Latin American literature of the 20th and 21st centuries. His research bridges the gap between those traditions, highlighting their aesthetic, cultural, and historical dialogue. He holds a PhD from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem (2022) and was a postdoctoral fellow at Freie Universität Berlin (2023-2025).