On the day after the Bondi massacre, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese told ABC journalist Sarah Ferguson that he never imagined an event like this occurring in Australia. Yet in the 26 months from the Hamas slaughter in Israel on 7 October 2023 to the mass murder at Hanukkah by the Sea, the warnings read like the Chronicle of a Death Foretold.

The writing – antisemitic graffiti – was literally on the walls of Jewish businesses, day care centres, schools, synagogues, and homes. The threats ricocheted through Sydney streets. Within 24 hours of the atrocities in Israel, hate preacher Ibrahim Dadaoun shouted in jubilation to a mob at Lakemba that 7 October was a day of courage and pride. The following night, an even larger mob – emboldened by a legal gathering on the steps of Town Hall – descended illegally to the forecourt of the Opera House, launching flares and chanting ‘Gas the Jews’, ‘F*ck the Jews’, and, most ominously, ‘Where’s the Jews’.

Careful study of footage of that ghoulish ‘night at the opera’ by the Campaign for Antisemitism suggests that alleged father-and-son terrorist murderers Sajid and Naveed Akram—or their doppelgangers—stood cheek-by-jowl with NSW police in a melee where no one was prosecuted for anything: unauthorised gathering, launching flares, or incitements to violence or hate speech. Had police investigated those breaching the peace, Akram junior might have been returned to Asio’s watch-list, and Akram senior might have had his gun licences revoked and his residency visa cancelled. Instead, the Akrams found out ‘where the Jews were’ and planned meticulously what they would do to them.

In the intervening months, a torrent of antisemitism was unleashed: Jewish homes, cars, offices, businesses, schools, and synagogues were vandalised or firebombed, there were weekly rallies in the CBDs and protests on university campuses calling for the elimination of Israel ‘from the river to the sea’ and the globalisation of the intifada—the campaign of violence in Israel from 2000 to 2005 that cost more than a thousand Israeli lives.

This escalation was inflamed by deeply biased coverage of the war in Gaza. Hamas talking points were laundered through ‘aid’ agencies staffed by Hamas operatives and Al Jazeera journalists affiliated with the group, then reported as gospel truth by the BBC and the ABC. The terrorists running Gaza – starving hostages in tunnels, using civilians as human shields, stealing humanitarian aid – were presented as the victims, while Israeli Defence Force, which warns civilians before all attacks, were cast as war criminals.

Denouncing Israel became fashionable in cultural institutions: at the Sydney Theatre Company and the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra; in the selection of a Hezbollah supporter to represent Australia at the Venice Biennale; in the appointment of a Hamas sympathiser as an ambassador for the Sydney Biennale.

The demonisation escalated further with senior Labor figures such as Bob Carr accusing Israel of crimes comparable to those of Stalin and Hitler. He marched over the Sydney Harbour Bridge with a throng of 90,000, beneath a giant portrait of Ayatollah Khamenei, as black-and-white jihadist flags fluttered alongside union banners.

Alongside them—and at separate rallies—Islamists chanted the Hamas slogan: ‘Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews! The army of Mohammed will return!’– a chant used by terrorists, including one of the 2002 Bali bombers, when he was sentenced to death.

At every step, the message was unmistakable. Leftists denounced Israel as a genocidal terror state, while Islamists pronounced the death sentence.

Yet on ABC Radio National in February, Late Night Live host David Marr professed astonishment that Opposition leader Peter Dutton could say ‘Jews are not safe in Albanese’s Australia’, dismissing the claim as an ‘extraordinary, dramatic accusation’. He received no pushback from his guest, the ABC’s senior journalist Laura Tingle.

Yet no one in the Jewish community – or among their allies – was surprised when the executioners emerged from this milieu. An arc stretched from the Nova music festival and the kibbutzim near Gaza on Simchat Torah in October 2023 to Hanukkah by the Sea at Bondi Beach in 2025, linked by an implacable and deadly logic.

The Prime Minister, who had spent two years ignoring the threats, and repeated pleas to confront antisemitism, as well as the warnings of his own intelligence chief, did not attend the funeral of a single victim. He went to a service at St Mary’s Cathedral before attending a synagogue. When he finally appeared at the Hanukkah vigil on the eighth night, he was booed by the crowd, while Labor Premier Chris Minns was cheered. That became the pretext for further moral inversion. Labor Party president and former treasurer Wayne Swan attacked grieving Jews by sharing a tweet that accused ‘Jewish people’ who booed the Prime Minister of hypocrisy for supporting Benjamin Netanyahu, who the tweeter blamed for allowing the Hamas massacre to occur as well as every death in Gaza. It was classic antisemitism; the Jews were blamed for murdering everyone, including themselves.

We must be able to name a problem if we are to have any hope of solving it. Yet self-censorship and euphemism have made that impossible. Despite the alleged terrorists displaying Islamic State flags and murdering Jews, Tingle insisted their actions were not religious. And despite police alleging that Naveed Akram recited from the Koran before explaining his motives, ABC managing director Hugh Marks backed her up.

The squeamishness, we are told, exists to avoid smearing law-abiding Muslims. Yet there are no qualms about portraying Israel as a genocidal terror state, despite the well-established risk that such rhetoric fuels antisemitism and jihadist violence against Jews. Violent extremism grows within ideological ecosystems, and the public normalisation of inflammatory anti-Zionism and Islamist symbolism – from jihadist flags to placards proclaiming ‘Gaza’s strength is in Islam’ – is radicalisation terrain.

Last week, the Prime Minister accused the Opposition of politicising the terrorist attack and said this was not the time for ‘political product differentiation’. In fact, there was broad bipartisan support for Israel until his election. It was Albanese who shattered that consensus, putting partisan politics and electoral pandering ahead of Jewish safety and national security.

If such atrocities are to be prevented in future, major change is essential: in immigration screening, policing, intelligence, education, and the tolerance of incitement masquerading as protest. What failed at Bondi was not foresight but nerve. The warnings were there, the ideology was visible, and the violence was foretold. What was missing was the courage hear and to act. Until that failure is confronted honestly, the next massacre is already being rehearsed.