On the evening of December 14, 2025, a Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach was shattered by a brutal, antisemitic mass shooting that left fifteen innocent people dead and dozens wounded, a sickening reminder that Jewish communities remain prime targets for barbaric hatred. The scene of children’s shoes and discarded belongings on the sand should shake every decent person across the free world — including those in power who too often shrug at the warning signs.
Police say the attack was carried out by two men, a father and his son, one of whom was killed at the scene while the other was taken into custody in critical condition after being shot by officers; investigators later found improvised explosive devices and an ISIS flag in the attackers’ vehicle. These are not the random acts of troubled loners the comfortable elites like to pretend — this was terrorism, plain and simple, inspired by a murderous Islamist ideology that seeks to wipe out Jews and terrorize communities.
Among the dead were people as young as ten and as old as eighty-seven, including a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor, underscoring the grotesque cowardice of targeting families and the elderly during a sacred festival. Hospitals in Sydney remain full of the injured and grieving, while the Jewish community reels from a wound that will not close until those responsible are stopped for good.
In the immediate aftermath, ordinary Australians — Jews, Muslims, Christians and neighbors of every background — gathered for vigils and mutual support, proving that civil society will not be cowed even as leadership debates meanings and motives. Those displays of solidarity are noble, but vigils alone will not prevent the next massacre if our leaders continue to coddle dangerous ideologies and fail to secure our streets.
Make no mistake: this carnage is the result of failed policies that prioritize ideology and optics over security. When governments excuse or minimize the rising tide of antisemitism and when law enforcement and immigration systems are hamstrung by political correctness, the safe spaces our grandparents fought to build become hunting grounds for extremists.
We should also confront uncomfortable facts: one of the suspects held a firearms license and lawful ownership did not stop him from turning weapons into instruments of mass murder. Australia’s history shows that serious reforms can follow tragedy, but any policy response must focus first on rooting out violent extremism, shoring up border and immigration vetting, and ensuring that licenses and gun ownership do not become blind spots exploited by radicals.
Conservative Americans should watch closely and speak plainly: there is no honor in offering empty platitudes while Islamist terror and antisemitic violence spread. Our answer must be strong law enforcement, uncompromising counterterrorism, and the moral clarity to call evil by its name — not euphemisms that let perpetrators hide behind ideology.
To the Jewish families mourning in Sydney and to Jewish communities everywhere: we stand with you and demand action from political leaders who too often trade safety for political expediency. Protecting worshippers, protecting children, and defending free speech and religious liberty are not partisan slogans — they are the very duties of a government that respects liberty and the rule of law.
