They came to kill us. We just weren't there.
In the aftermath of a massacre that claimed fifteen lives at a Hanukah gathering on Bondi Beach, a royal commission in Australia is hearing what hatred looks like when it becomes ordinary — swastikas on school walls, children who weep at the sight of the sea, and a community that has learned to measure its safety in exits and absences. The hearings, convened in May 2026, are asking not only how antisemitism returned to public life in Australia, but how it was allowed to settle there, quietly, before the shooting made it impossible to look away.
- Jewish children across Australia are navigating school days filled with Nazi salutes, swastikas, and slurs so frequent that parents describe the hatred as simply part of the atmosphere.
- The December Bondi massacre — fifteen killed at a beachside Hanukah celebration — did not create this climate but violently confirmed it, leaving children afraid to attend Jewish events and weeping at the sight of a beach they once loved.
- Parents testify that their children are refusing to identify as Jewish, drowning in social media content that rehabilitates Nazi ideology and blames Jewish Australians personally for the actions of the Israeli government.
- A persistent and damaging conflation — treating Jewish identity and Israeli state policy as interchangeable — has left Jewish Australians uniquely accountable for a foreign government's actions, a standard applied to no other diaspora community.
- The royal commission is now attempting to map how this normalization occurred and what institutional, educational, and social interventions might begin to dismantle it.
A Sydney mother told a royal commission in May that her eight-year-old now associates Bondi Beach with death. On a recent visit, the child wept and said: I think about dying when I come here now. It was a small moment carrying the full weight of what Jewish life in Australia has become.
The second day of public hearings into antisemitism and social cohesion gathered testimony from parents who have watched their children absorb a new and frightening precarity. A woman identified as Dina described a community living with antisemitism "all day, every day" — children too frightened to attend a Hanukah party, a massacre framed not as an aberration but as the violent endpoint of years of accumulating hatred. "The reality is, they came to kill us," she said. "We just weren't there."
Natalie Levy described her teenage daughter as one of only two Jewish students at her Sydney school, regularly exposed to swastikas and Nazi salutes. Levy herself has been called a kike, a baby killer, a genocidal Jew — mostly by strangers online who feel no need to restrain themselves. A Victorian mother reported that her children have come home saying they don't want to be Jewish anymore, and that when a Jewish street festival was organized in Melbourne, they refused to go. They said they might be shot. When she mentioned security, they replied that guards don't stand a chance against a gunman.
The royal commission was established after two gunmen killed fifteen people and wounded forty at a Hanukah gathering in Bondi in December. Witnesses at the hearings described a troubling pattern: Jewish Australians are routinely held personally responsible for the actions of the Israeli government, a conflation applied to no other diaspora. Tali Pinsky, an Israeli academic now working in Australia, noted that the Bondi victims seemed not to be fully mourned as Australians. Vic Alhadeff, a former head of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, testified that antisemitism — once marginal — has become normalized, emboldened, and brazenly unashamed.
The commission is now charged with understanding how hatred that once hid in the margins came to etch itself into school walls and into the fears of children who can no longer look at the ocean without thinking of dying.
A Sydney mother sat before a royal commission in May and described a childhood that no longer exists for her own children. Her eight-year-old, she said, now associates Bondi Beach—a place of summer and swimming—with death. When the family visited recently, the child wept and told her: I think about dying when I come here now.
This is the texture of life for Jewish children in Australia in 2026. They move through school days marked by swastikas etched into walls, by classmates performing Nazi salutes in hallways, by a steady hum of slurs that has become, in the testimony of parents, simply normal. The mother, identified as Dina in the commission's proceedings, told Commissioner Virginia Bell that her community lives with antisemitism "all day, every day." She spoke of overhearing Jewish children say they were too frightened to attend a Hanukah party. She framed the Bondi massacre—the shooting in December that killed 15 people at a beachside Hanukah celebration—not as an isolated atrocity but as the violent punctuation mark on a sentence that had been building for years.
"The reality is, they came to kill us," Dina said. "We just weren't there."
The second day of public hearings into antisemitism and social cohesion surfaced the weight of this fear through the voices of parents who have watched their children internalize a new precarity. Natalie Levy described her fifteen-year-old daughter as one of only two Jewish students at her government school in Sydney. The girl sees swastikas regularly. She hears "Heil Hitler" and watches classmates raise their arms in salute. Levy herself has been called a kike, a dirty Jew, a dirty Jewish pig, a baby killer, a baby eater, genocidal—mostly on social media, mostly by strangers who feel emboldened enough to write these things in her name. "I can't believe that in 2026, in this beautiful country, that antisemitism has become so normalised," she told the commission. She had grown up believing such rhetoric belonged only to history.
A mother from Victoria, identified as AAP, reported that her children have come home from school saying they don't want to be Jewish. They are drowning in antisemitic content on social media: messages saying we owe Hitler an apology, that the Nazis should have finished the job, that Jews control the government, that Israel is nothing but a criminal record. When a Jewish community group organized a street food festival in Melbourne, her children refused to attend. They said they might be shot. When she reminded them that police and security would be present, they replied: they don't stand a chance against a gunman. They had no confidence in their own safety.
The royal commission was established in the wake of the Bondi massacre, when two gunmen opened fire on a Hanukah gathering, killing 15 people and wounding 40 others. The first block of hearings has focused on how antisemitism is defined, how it has manifested historically and now, and what it costs the Jewish community to live under its weight. Tali Pinsky, who moved to Australia from Israel last year to work at a university, described Australians as generally welcoming but noted a persistent conflation: the state of Israel and Jewish people are treated as one entity. When Israel acts in Gaza, Jewish Australians are personally blamed. Citizens of other nations involved in conflicts are not held to this standard. She spoke of how the Bondi victims, because they were Jewish, seemed not to be fully mourned as Australians.
Vic Alhadeff, former chief executive of the NSW Jewish Board of Deputies, testified that antisemitism was once marginal in Australia. It has since become normalized, emboldened, brazenly unashamed. He echoed the concern about conflation: Jewish Australians are being held accountable for the actions of the Israeli government and military, entities over which they have no control. Yet much of the antisemitic violence and rhetoric that has surged in the past two and a half years is explicitly tied to events on the other side of the world. The commission is now tasked with understanding how this happened, and what it will take to reverse it.
Citas Notables
I can't believe that in 2026, in this beautiful country, that antisemitism has become so normalised.— Natalie Levy, parent testifying before the commission
Jewish Australians have no agency in what the Israel Defense Force does, or indeed what the Israeli government does. And yet so much of the manifestation of antisemitic incidents and attacks is interlaced with what is taking place on the other side of the world.— Vic Alhadeff, former chief executive of NSW Jewish Board of Deputies
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
When you listen to these parents describe what their children are experiencing, what strikes you most?
The ordinariness of it. These aren't isolated incidents. A child sees a swastika at school and keeps walking. Hears a slur and sits down for lunch. The fear becomes ambient, something you breathe in every day.
The Bondi massacre happened in December. These testimonies are in May. Has something shifted in how people talk about this?
The massacre didn't create the antisemitism—it revealed it. It gave a name to something that was already there, diffuse and normalized. Now parents are saying: this is what we've been living with, and now you can see why we're terrified.
One mother said her children think they might be shot at a community event. That's not just fear—that's a kind of psychological siege.
Yes. And notice what she said when she tried to reassure them: there will be security, there will be police. And the children answered: it won't matter. They've lost faith in the idea that protection is possible. That's what the massacre did—it made the worst-case scenario feel inevitable.
Several witnesses mentioned conflating Israel with Jewish Australians. Why does that matter so much?
Because it gives permission. If you believe Jewish people are responsible for Israeli government policy, then any anger at Israel becomes anger at Jews. It becomes personal. It becomes justified, in your own mind. And it spreads from politics into schools, into social media, into the everyday.
What does the commission actually need to do with this testimony?
Understand that this isn't about debate or disagreement. It's about whether a community can feel safe in the country they live in. The commission has to figure out how antisemitism became normal, and whether Australia can make it abnormal again.