First thoughts of the terror attack at Bondi Beach

0:00And we are back in circumstances, sadly, none of us expected and certainly wanted to be here. Coming to you on Monday, the 15th of December, after one of Australia's, actually Australia's most devastating terror attack with at least 16 people brutally murdered on Bondi Beach. And I expect this number will increase significantly with upwards of 40 seriously injured in various Sydney hospitals. This is a dark day for Jewish people. Obviously, Adia and myself have been members of this community and we're heavily impacted. This is a dark day for every Australian. Let's be sure this is our worst terrorist attack on Australian shores and something that sadly wasn't so shocking for members of the Jewish community.

0:46I think it was a question of when, not if and Adia you've been really vocal on these issues and very correctly so I'll throw to you on just get your thoughts at this tragic time. Yeah well firstly it's worth saying you know we had a chat about whether we should do this episode in between episodes and we both thought it was important just because we both felt we had to wanted to speak and also there's so much talk going around would be worthwhile having a conversation about it. You're on a plane at the moment, so you've gone above and beyond to make yourself available for this. Thank goodness for Elon Musk's Starlink making this possible.

1:27I think the way we should talk about this is essentially in three brief parts. The first part is because we shouldn't talk about what happened because things are changing so rapidly that by the time we finish this episode, everything will have changed again. But we should speak about how the Jewish community is feeling at the moment. Obviously, we have some insight into that. What the implications are for Australia and what should happen from here. They would be my three components to speak about. I think, you know, there's a guy that sits on my board. His name is Jim Orlando. He's very good. And he has these rules.

2:06He sticks up on the wall in his office. and one of the rules is leave history to the historians. And I think it's good advice about focusing on the present to have a better future as opposed to re-prosecuting all of the mistakes that have been made in the past. And certainly, you know, in the third part of what I think we should talk about, we should talk about what needs to change. But I don't plan on re-prosecuting everything that led up to this moment and with vindictiveness against certain individuals. I think it's more important to move forward. From my perspective, I mean, the way the community feels about this is that after each attack on Jews in Australia over the past two years, nobody asked how could this happen.

2:57I mean, people obviously asked how could this happen in Australia, but nobody asked how could this attack happen. Like, where did this come from? People consistently asked, what is the next attack going to be? And how bad do things need to get before action is taken to make the community safe again? And so I think the fact that there was a terror attack that resulted in a mass casualty event, anti-Semitic targeting Jews, that was not inconceivable in any way in the community. it doesn't diminish the overwhelming sadness i mean i feel very very emotional speaking now it doesn't diminish the overwhelming sadness it doesn't diminish the fact that um more than a dozen completely innocent people are gunned down just going to a community celebration of a festival, including a young girl, but including all sorts of different people who had only one thing in common, and that is they're members of the Jewish community.

4:05Some were religious, some were not very religious. And so it's a terrible, terrible tragedy. And I think the community is wondering whether there is still a place for Jews in Australia if nobody is able or prepared to keep us safe in Australia, my guess is that the end result of that consideration for the vast majority of people will be, yes, this is a country that we belong in, we're Australians, and the country needs to protect its minorities, including Jews. So that's my perspective on where things are at in the community. but although the communities in Melbourne and Sydney, they're the two largest communities, they're distinct communities but there's a lot of overlap between them and there are also some communities, much smaller communities in other places like Adelaide, Perth, Brisbane, Gold Coast.

5:04There are only 100 or 110 ,000 Jews in Australia. It's a very small community and so everyone that is in the Jewish community will in some way be connected or feel connected to people that have been killed or wounded in this attack and everyone will feel very vulnerable. And maybe the last comment I'll make on this is when people, outsiders, look at Jewish people, often what they see is power and wealth, which is a misleading stereotype to begin with. I mean, there are almost no Jewish billionaires. And in fact, there's not many people with more than$10 million in the Jewish community. The majority of the community is middle class.

5:43But Jews always feel vulnerable and like they are under threat. And it's difficult for people that are not Jews to understand this dramatic mismatch in the way Jews are often perceived externally and the way they feel internally. And I think this type of horrendous event highlights why Jews tend to feel paranoid and why Jews tend to feel like they are under threat and are not this power dynamic that they're often perceived as being or having. Yeah, I think there's lots of really good points there. I think if you take a small call to Silver Lining, I'm sure you're the same. I've had hundreds of people reach out to me in the last 12 hours outside the Jewish community with really nice, we've had listeners reach out, we've had colleagues, I've had obviously friends reach out.

6:38I think there's also an understanding that where goes the Jewish community goes the rest of Australia. so I think there's a specific incident which I'm not going to say is a lone wolf incident but appears to be not a sort of deeply coordinated September 11 style terrorist attack it seems obviously the father and son so it seems to be a bit different to some of the other terrorist attacks but similar to others as well because obviously most are lone wolf style attacks so I guess the question is how imbued is this anti-Semitic views in the community or is it a smaller number? Is the weekly, which has now stopped thankfully, was the weekly marches, was the Harper Bridge marches symbolic of a wider community view or was it a minority view?

7:29I think that's a really hard question to answer. I think there's obviously so many negatives to take from this And obviously the clear negative is the slaughter of probably upwards of 20 people, innocent people, 10-year-old, beautiful 10-year-old child, Holocaust survivors, all sorts of innocent people. But the impact on the broader community, this is absolutely an event that targeted Jewish people. Jewish people are Australians. And this is an event that targeted Australians and targeted a democracy that we love and cherish. And it could have been non-Jews who were murdered at the same time, even though they were targeting Jews.

8:06that could have killed, we don't know who exactly was killed, that could have killed anyone. This was an attack on our way of life as well as a direct attack on the Jewish community. So let me then move, yeah, exactly to point number two, which is what does this mean for Australia? I think in the past it's been quite easy because it's been quite easy for people to feel, well, this is an issue that the Jews are confronting. It doesn't really directly involve me and I completely understand that viewpoint. The way all of us need to survive mentally is that we can't feel like every attack on everyone in every circumstance is an attack on us.

8:40We just, there has to be some cognitive distancing from these types of things. It's why like globalized news, when you see famines in Africa and you watch that too much, eventually it's going to bring you down mentally. So I understand why people have felt like it may not have directly affected them, even though obviously we have a different view that this is a canary in a coal mind type situation. But the reason I think this is so profound for Australia, and this is a turning point for the country, is because the core values that this country has prided itself on, really for as long as I've been alive, and as much as I spoke to my grandparents about it, is that you can come to this country and first and foremost you can be an Aussie and the grief the hate that might exist outside the borders of Australia it doesn't cross into our borders and so it's why you see things like you know Pakistani people and Indian people who might have very different views about some very important things but they interact on the same cricket team and play cricket together and hang out together after the game.

9:51And that is true across the spectrum of different people from different places. Back in the day, it might have been Turks and Greeks that felt the same way. And I've always felt in this country, at least until probably the last 10 or 15 years, that we were all in this together. And what's happened as a result of the last couple of years is that a particular minority group has been severely targeted based on their identity. It's the subjugation of humanity and the replacement with identity. And that is not something I ever experienced in Australia before that. And the problem, and it's easy for it to be the Jews first because the Jews, they kind of often feel different to other people, even though there's not many differences between Australian Jews and other Australians.

10:42Like most Australian Jews I know are Australian first and love all of the Aussie things and we're all very much Australian. And the challenge with imperiling one minority group and allowing people to start defining Australians not by their humanity or who they are as people, but by the other identity that they have as part of their Australianism, I guess, is that we all have that. This is a country made up of people who, by and large, retain some kind of cultural identity from wherever they came from initially but are still Aussies first and foremost. And all of these people are in peril because we're all some form of minority in some way and once the protection of minorities in this country is no longer important, then everybody who wants to hold on to their cultural heritage and have more than one part of who they are, every one of these people can no longer feel like they will be treated as an Australian first and I think that is the terrible, terrible risk we now run in Australia that if humanity is overrun by identity in this country, then it is a slippery slope to everybody ultimately hating everyone and that is where this leads.

12:06That's how I feel about it from an Australian point of view. Yeah, I think that's right. And the really sort of challenging thing is, and I think for a lot of Jews over the last year and a half since October 7, was I think the hatred towards Jews guised under the sort of false flag of anti-Zionism when many Jews here have nothing to do with or obviously support Israel, but have no involvement in the war that occurred. And it was an incredibly sort of false narrative that were used by certain people. And I think what was like super disappointing was that sort of pile on we saw from various parts of court, the sort of Anglo community and politicians and people who weaponized this hatred.

12:53and I'm not saying this is the culmination of it because I don't think you can link the two and I think linking the two is actually highly problematic and I think blaming people like the Prime Minister and the Foreign Minister whilst I'm no fan of them, I'm not sure that's helpful. In fact, I'm sure it's the opposite of that. But I think the division we've seen in the past 18 months has culminated in this and when you allow people to march across the Harbour Bridge holding Hamas flags, you create a normalisation of hatred that then leads to this sort of thing. And that's almost where I think Australia's really lost their way in the last 18 months.

13:30So that kind of segues into what do I think has to happen now for this country. The first thing I think has to happen is that we cannot succumb to hate as a result of this. Sometimes there are terrible people and the only way to respond in the moment is that you have to fight them. but in general I know it might sound trite but I very much believe from my heart in general the only way that you overcome hate in the long term is by sharing the love and what I mean by that is that and I'll be very specific here there have been many things that have happened inside Australia's Muslim community that have been very problematic to watch including calls for all sorts of nasty things against Jews from various imams.

14:17But the truth is, I can speak with firsthand experience, that I have friends and acquaintances who practice the Islamic faith. I'm sure we disagree on some issues, but fundamentally we have this huge amount of personal respect for each other. Essentially every one of them has reached out to me, and I think that Pauline Hanson is going to get a big blip in support from this and we can't forget that um when when she was leader 25 years ago there was a huge backlash against people that look chinese or asian in the australian population and that was terrible as well and so i think fundamentally we cannot succumb to hate in the process of trying to eradicate this problem because there is a problem that has to be dealt with here and eradicated but turning against communities is not the way forward and I think it is very sobering that the hero of this tragic, tragic event which is this Ahmed Al-Ahmad guy, it's like a fruiterer from the Shire in Sydney who basically brought down one of the terrorists totally unarmed.

15:27The whole world has seen this footage now. Donald Trump has commented on it. By all accounts this guy is a Muslim and it's a reminder of humanity before identity and not to judge people based on the cultural or ethnic background that they come from but who they are as people and I hope that that moment reminds people that more hate is not the cure to current hate. So that would be my first point about the future of Australia. Yeah, I think, and just on that, on the hero, I was obviously seeing that footage was incredible. It's one of the most heroic acts I've ever seen. And the fact that he was a Muslim, I think that shows all of us that this is not a Muslim versus Jew thing.

16:18This is a small number of people that could be Muslims, could not very well not be, who love to hate and who love to kill. And these are the people who are the enemies of life and democracy. and it's not every Muslim by any stretch. It's a small percentage of people who, I'm trying to work out how to word this properly, it's a small percentage of people who don't represent every Muslim, who don't represent every Jew, and ultimately hate breeds hate. And I think if you look at the best part of foreign policy in the last really probably 30 years in the Middle East It's the Abraham Accords, which is Jewish countries and Muslim countries coming together and realizing that our similarities are more important than our differences.

17:10I agree. So I think we're on the same page on this. But having said that, we need to be clear-eyed and say the following. There is a big problem in the tolerance for increasingly vitriolic anti-Semitic hate against Jews, including calling for violence and killing. and some of that does emanate from the Muslim community in Australia and some of it emanates from outside the Muslim community in the general far-left community and this is not a problem isolated to one group of people and that needs to stop. And for example, the way that the word Zionist has been twisted to mean someone who wants to kill Palestinians and then people are running through the streets yelling all Zionists are terrorists and death to the IDF.

18:03I mean, we should not be calling for anyone to be killed as part of free speech in a democratic country. But as I say to people, this word Zionist, everybody I know, Jewish or non-Jewish, or virtually everyone, Jewish or non-Jewish, whatever cultural background, whatever their occupation is, if I talk to them about this issue, or generally they would raise it with me, almost without exception, they tell me they're an advocate of the two-state solution in the Middle East. I say to them, that means you're a Zionist. Because a Zionist just means you think that the Jews should have a home in their traditional homeland in Israel.

18:35And actually the core of Zionism at the start of the whole Israel founding came from the left-wing, not the right-wing. For the first 30 of its 77 years, it was left-wing governments that said a tenet in writing and verbally that was clearly stated was that everybody inside the country would have equal rights irrespective of religion or race. And the aim was to have peace with neighbours. And I think your mention of the Abraham Accords is completely consistent with the Zionist project. And I'm not blind to the fact that the current Israeli government has alienated lots and lots of people, including Jewish people and Zionist people.

19:13But fundamentally, this distortion of the word Zionist to drive this extreme hate when people then say, well, 80 % of Jews in Australia are Zionists, so they must all be terrorists. These words, violent rhetoric leads to acts of violence. That is the way that is the timeline of behaviors in society. And so calling to globalize the intifada, what we saw on Bondi Beach, that was globalization of the intifada. Calling from the river to the sea, what we saw was the conflict being dragged from the Jordan River in Israel to the sea at Bondi Beach. This is all part of a movement that has preached extreme hate in Australia.

20:06And we can say again, clear-eyed, that politicians in need of votes, some ideologically, but most in need of votes have cynically allowed this type of behavior to continue. And that is what has created an environment that has whipped up a frenzy of hate in this country. And that absolutely has to stop. So we have to hunt down the hopefully few people in this country that genuinely want to hurt Jews. So they need to be hunted down and held to account. and if they're not from Australia, they need to be sent away from Australia. But then we also need to stop the hate rhetoric that is pervasive in our society today because in a place that values freedom of speech, that freedom is not absolute and it also comes with consequences.

21:04And when you preach for bad things to physically happen to other Australians or for deaths of people overseas, this is inconsistent with the values of free speech. And it highlights that free speech is not absolute. There needs to be laws and those laws need to be enforced. And I think fundamentally that is the most important change that needs to happen and not confined to anti-Semitic hate speech, although that has been exceptionally prevalent. But to all hate speech, nobody should be marching in Australia and preaching hate towards any other group in Australia, nor death to anyone full stop.

21:52it's not a hard rule that is one of the changes that needs to happen at law and i think unfortunately during covid we had the prime minister who was the worst possible person at the worst possible time and i think i don't think albany i don't think albanese and pennywong disliked jews but i think albanese unfortunately is is is a lifelong grifter and he did what he did because he thought that would maximize his political it maximizes votes in western sydney or wherever wherever these pockets of votes were so i think this is a wake up certainly a wake up call to the government that and members of the judiciary as well who certainly don't have clean hands here who have allowed hate to fester and i still i can hark back to that harbour bridge march with people literally holding up terrorist propaganda hamus propaganda and this is this is the net effect we have hamus like activities on our shores and people not just Jews, innocent people getting killed by what appears to be assault weapons.

22:53And that's what happens. Well, let's not forget that Bridge March was permitted by a New South Wales Supreme Court judge. So the problems, the moral obscurity that is occurring in this country exists at multiple very senior levels. it's going to be a significant project to rectify the situation but it is possible to get back the country that we had 15 years ago and to eradicate this it is a global trend but we are better placed than almost any country in the world to fight back against this trend because we have a uniquely good political system in this country although it doesn't feel like it at the moment but we do And so I think there is lots of hope, but serious action needs to be taken.

23:42And making calls like Israel is perpetrating genocide against Palestinians, when the data doesn't support it and when countries like the UK are coming out and saying it's untrue, those type of remarks from senior cabinet ministers or demoted former senior cabinet ministers, they just add to the environment of hate against minorities in this case Jews so I want to finish I think I would be very very remiss not to finish by again just sharing the overwhelming grief of the people that have been killed in this attack and the people that have been wounded and to acknowledge and obviously their families and to acknowledge the two police officers who in the line of duty imperiled themselves to protect all of us.

24:37They were also severely wounded and are in hospital. And we just want to share our gratitude and wish them the very best and all of the first responders that had to deal with the aftermath of a horrendous terrorist attack. We're very lucky to have these people protecting us in Australia. And it's certainly close to home. we've had there's current and former team members who have lost people very close to them who have died in this incident um we had a team member on site uh bravely on site who thank god was okay but you can't get any closer home to this this is this is our community this is people we know who who have been killed who've been murdered in cold blood uh so it's it's a dark day for So it's a dark day for the Jewish community, but it's a dark day for Australia, no doubt.

25:28Well, in the face of this tragedy, I think people should think about what are we all going to do today that increases the social cohesion a little bit and starts bringing this country to a place where it can heal and get back to being what I genuinely believe is the best country on earth? Well said. We'll see everybody tomorrow for our big episode on this dark day.