Was an antisemitic attack in Australia inevitable?

0:02Sky News, the full story first.

0:09Coming up, a massacre on Bondi Beach speaks very directly to a rise in Australian anti-Semitism. Politicians talk of unity and tolerance as the security services investigate, but could both have done more to actually stop this from happening.

0:27It's been described as the worst ever terrorist attack on Australian soil. Members of the Jewish community had gathered on Sydney's Bondi Beach. Their purpose was nothing more than to begin the Hanukkah celebrations, the Jewish festival of light. Yet it was darkness that came to define the day. A pair of attackers opened fire indiscriminately. One of the alleged gunmen has been named by New South Wales police as 24-year-old Naveed Akram. while the other has been identified locally as his 50-year-old father, Sajid Akram. At the time of recording, 15 are dead. 16, if you include one of the attackers, the father.

1:06But many more are in a serious condition in hospital. Frankly, the death toll would have been significantly higher, were it not for the bravery of those who ran right into the line of fire to help. Now, obviously, the investigation is at a very early stage, but that will do little to stop the clamour for answers. Answers to questions like, could this have been prevented? And are Jews safe anywhere? We're going to be discussing the rise in Australian anti-Semitism in a little while with Josh Roos. He's an Australian expert on violent extremism and terrorism. But we're going to start with our correspondent in Sydney, Nicole Johnston.

1:41Nicole, Bondi Beach is one of those places that is known around the world. For Australians, though, it has a very special place. So how did you feel when you saw those initial reports coming in? I think I was just shocked, as shocked as anybody in Australia and kind of disbelief. We initially started to get reports of gunfire down here of 20 odd people who'd been shot. And it was it was hard to imagine, to be honest. I live about 10 or 15 minutes from here. I'd been on Bondi Beach the day before, enjoying the sun and swimming for about five hours. but I think like all journalists you immediately shift into work mode and you start to think okay what do we do now we have to get down there how do we get down there is it going to be safe and what is really happening.

2:31And you were on the scene you know very soon after the shooting started what did you what did you see? When we first came down I was really surprised about how many people were just milling around taking videos on their phone watching the police watching the ambulances. We saw a few stretches and people were trying to comfort each other. I thought it would be a lot quieter that things would have properly locked down. But I guess that speaks to the point that this is such a huge tourist area. So it's not that easy for the police to turn around and lock this place down. And then we did start talking to people who had witnessed it, who'd been in the shops, who had tried to administer first aid, who had seen injured people who had seen people killed and there was just that sense of shock everywhere.

3:21People were in a real state so it was incredibly raw and confronting. Of course the focus has been on those who have lost their lives and who have been injured but now that the investigation is up and running an awful lot of the focus will be on the attackers. What do we know about them? Well we know quite shockingly that it was a father and son the alleged shooters so a 50 year old man and his 24 year old son and one of the big questions that's being asked of course is how did this pair manage to get such a huge cache of weapons we know that the older man had a gun registration license that he was allowed to have six of these weapons how was this allowed to happen in a country like Australia, which has such strict gun control laws.

4:13We also know that they were from Western Sydney, that they had been living in that part of the city, and that there are possibly links to Islamic State, and that the Australian Federal Police and Australian Security and Intelligence Services had investigated the younger man for alleged links to Islamic State in 2019. So he had been on the radar, but at that stage the police didn't find any reason to suspect that he would become a threat. But now, of course, these are questions that people are asking and wondering, how did a country like Australia end up with such a massive security and intelligence failure?

4:56Let's talk a bit then about the hero of the Arab. One of a few heroes, I imagine, in fact, but one that we know of and has been named, Ahmed Al-Amed. What do we know of him and what he achieved on that day? Well, we've all seen the video. It was extraordinary, wasn't it? How he basically waited for a moment when he could attempt to take on one of the gunmen and he tackled him, essentially, and took this long rifle off him. And as we've heard from the Prime Minister, from the US President Donald Trump and from all sorts of people, he probably saved a lot of lives in doing so. We spent some time in Western Sydney today trying to speak to his parents.

5:38He's originally from Syria, but he's been in Australia for a very long time. And they're also shocked, but also very proud. They said that he is somebody who is always trying to help people, that they weren't surprised that he had taken this sort of action. He is from a Muslim background. He wouldn't care what religion or faith or community anybody is from, and that when he saw an attack like that take place that he just wanted to step in and try and help. But he managed to overcome and overpower this gunman, get the rifle off him and certainly saved many lives in doing so. Nicole, we've heard everyone from the Prime Minister and the New South Wales Premier talking about a need for calm, that Australians should be wrapping their arms around their fellow Australians, the Jewish people in their community.

6:29Are we seeing that? We know today that they've started to have meetings between a Muslim, Christian and Jewish leaders in different parts of the city. They want to try and work out how to pull together over the next few days, what the messages should be. We've heard from the Muslim community here, the senior imams. They have asked their community to reach out to their Jewish neighbours. So there is a real sense that they do want to see the country pulling together. On Wednesday evening in the main cathedral inside Sydney, they're going to have the leaders of all of those different faith groups there lighting candles.

7:09So I think we'll see more of those events over the next few days as Australia really tries to find a way to move forward and come to terms with what's happened here. Thanks, Nicole. So, as you would expect, there is considerable anger, not just at the senseless, needless violence, but also at the way in which Australia has handled anti-Semitism since the October 7th attacks. Dr Josh Roos is Associate Professor of Politics at Deakin University. He's also an expert on terrorism and violent extremism. Josh, look, has there been a feeling amongst Australian Jews that an attack like this was inevitable?

7:46Nicole Johnston:This has unfortunately been on the cards for quite some time and the Australian Jewish community have been expressing deep concern about the potential for such a terror attack for several years now. In the immediate aftermath of the October 7th attack, There were Islamist mobs, effectively, on the steps of the Australian Opera House saying, gas the Jews and F the Jews. That wasn't dealt with at the time adequately, and it's spiralled ever since. And unfortunately, this was entirely predictable. When you say that it wasn't properly dealt with at the time, what do you mean? There was a failure to hold anyone to account for those words and that action.

8:20Nicole Johnston:Since then, there's been the targeting of Jewish communities in their own suburbs where they live, be it graffiti, be it arson attacks. On the one hand, now Nazis are being publicly calling for the forcible deportation of Australian Jews. And on the other, you've got Islamist extremists. And in the case recently, the Iranian government sponsoring terror attacks against Australian Jews. So this has been an incredibly volatile, heated atmosphere. And Australian Jews have felt unsafe and been expressing that for quite some time. Can we say with absolute certainty then that there has been an increase in anti-Semitism in Australia since October the 7th?

9:01Nicole Johnston:The measures indicate over a thousand percent increase. Unfortunately, we're still light years behind in the fact that the government doesn't capture this in any meaningful sense objectively. So we're reliant on communities. They've been expressing everything from graffiti attacks through to threats on public transport through to physical attacks. and we know that any reporting mechanism is only the tip of the iceberg of what's actually occurring in the wider community. Explain the anger that is being directed very personally at the Prime Minister. The Prime Minister has, for a prolonged period of time, arguably failed to act to the extent necessary to address this problem.

9:38Nicole Johnston:For example, in the immediate aftermath of October 7, when there was extensive pressure to get greater Jewish representation in terms of decision-making about security, there was an anti-Semitism envoy, Gillian Siegel, a very prominent businesswoman, was appointed. At the same time, to balance the book, so to speak, there was also the appointment of an Islamophobia envoy. Funding to both bodies was equal, despite the much less significant threat at that point, and at the current level, to Muslim communities. The Prime Minister was, in his youth, a founder of, I believe it was Students for Palestine, back in the 80s.

10:15Nicole Johnston:A very prominent pro-Palestinian activist throughout his political years. has been seen and perceived to have favoured not only Muslim representation, but also obviously Palestine in the recent war. He's seen as not having come out strongly enough, not only in favour and support of Australia's Jewish communities, but also Australia's historical support for Israel in the context of that conflict. There is, at the very least, a strong perception that Albanese's government has behaved in this fashion for ideological reasons. But isn't it also possible that it's partly to do with the fact that the Jewish community in Australia isn't particularly sizable, is it?

10:55Nicole Johnston:No, it's remained remarkably small. It's about 100 ,000 strong. The Australian Jewish population have always been highly influential, not only in academic life, in business and in community and civic life. However, in recent years, there's been a significant growth in Muslim migration and the population's risen exponentially from about 250 ,000 in 2006 to close to a million now, with exponential growth forecast as well into the future. There's effectively a political momentum behind Australia's Muslim communities who are starting to organise along religious lines, or at least some activists are.

11:32How integrated a society would you say Australia is in 2025?

11:36Nicole Johnston:Australia is an incredibly successful multicultural country on so many measures. New communities come in, they work hard, they settle down. What we're seeing, though, traditionally is also the second and third generations tend to struggle more than their parents who have come in educated and hardworking. Which is, I suppose, different to the reality of second and third generation young people who experience, for example, embedded racism in a different way. I'm just wondering how legitimate are those who are currently pointing at the fact that at least one of the attackers was known to security services and saying there has been a gigantic failure of intelligence here?

12:13How legitimate is that, do you think?

12:15Nicole Johnston:Our intelligence agencies are, to be fair, very good at their jobs and have prevented many attacks. I think the challenge here has been the sheer scale of the problem and the resources required to keep Australia safe. Now, there has been clearly some form of breakdown, not only in identification of the threat posed by this individual, who may have come onto the radar because of his interaction with other extremist thinking, and based on reporting Islamic State-oriented young men, but also the fact that he was able to access through his father six firearms that had been legally bought and registered.

12:51We know, of course, that that is one of the things that the Prime Minister is looking at, tightening up the gun laws in Australia. I'm just wondering how that might happen and to what extent it is needed. It was 30 years ago that there were more than 30 people killed in Port Arthur in a mass killing spree. And I think many Australians felt that with the laws that were brought in at that point, that sort of thing wouldn't happen again.

13:12Nicole Johnston:And it hasn't happened again. That was in 1996. And very quickly, the Conservative government, led by then Prime Minister John Howard, brought in some of the most ride-ranging hours to effectively force a buyback of weapons. And it was deeply unpopular given Australian culture, but we'd had a number of mass shootings up to that point. And we have not had a single mass shooting since the Port Arthur attack. To that extent, there's a strong argument that the laws have been fixed for purpose. Effectively, the fault line that was exploited here was two individuals with access to six firearms, even though these were single loaded weapons and had to be really like cocked every time that they were fired, they nonetheless were able to fire a high cyclical rate and it obviously practiced and were quite malevolent in that, you know, lead up with their hostile reconnaissance, taking the high ground.

14:06Nicole Johnston:So they got absolutely everything they could out of the use of these weapons. And so obviously we've seen a reasonably, unfortunately, very high death toll, but it could have been a lot worse if they were semi-automatic weapons. So the challenge here is that Australia has tens of thousands of farmers, recreational hunters, and many others, sporting shooters, for example, who use weapons, in a very responsible manner. And so electorally, the Prime Minister will be speaking to his base in taking action, but it will be electorally unpopular with people saying that they've had nothing to do with this.

14:41Nicole Johnston:So do new gun laws need to be introduced? I think there certainly needs to be much greater attention paid to the intelligence around who's accessing firearms, who are their acquaintances and how many can you purchase. Do you need six firearms? Are you living in suburban Sydney or Melbourne? No. But on the other hand, we've got to be careful to base everything in evidence so that we're getting the best possible combination. What then to do about the problem at the core of what took place on Bondi Beach, or what we assume was the problem, anti-Semitism? In the aftermath of October 7 and the aftermath of the Gaza conflict, it's fair to say that interfaith dialogue is broken down to almost nothing.

15:27Nicole Johnston:It's almost become non-existent in Australia at the moment. As a case in point, the Australian Board of Imams released a statement condemning the attack, but they didn't once mention the Jewish population in that statement. So we've seen deep divisions and it really does tie back to the Palestinian issue and the conflict there. And so, you know, an enormous amount of work needs to be done there to build those relationships back up, to build trust. And that's going to take a significant period of time. You are an expert in extremism, and I imagine your thoughts have been around that, but you're You're also an Australian and I just wonder what you thought when you started to see those reports coming through of a shooting taking place in somewhere as iconic as Bondi, what went through your head?

16:15Nicole Johnston:I think all Australians have just about visited Bondi at some point. It's a rite of passage. This is an area that's really at the heart of Australian cultural life and our international expression of cultural life, Australia by the beach. So for that reason, it's incredibly symbolic. I still personally haven't been able to process this because I've been dealing so much media and other work in this space. But Australia is deeply impacted. There's an enormous amount of grief. You know, we've seen Holocaust survivors gunned down on the sands of Bondi Beach. where we've seen a 10-year-old girl gunned down, shot dead on Bondi Beach.

16:55Nicole Johnston:It's incredibly devastating to see. An enormous amount of healing is going to be required, but also significant political debate and I think hostility is going to emerge from this as we emerge from the aftermath as to who's responsible. I think Australia is going to navigate a very tricky period moving forward. Like other Western countries, we're facing a bit of a reckoning at the moment about what it means to be Australian. Can we overcome these social divisions? Can we overcome those who are seeking to exploit them for political or financial gain? I'm optimistic that Australia, because we're a very pragmatic country, we don't like extremism.

17:32Nicole Johnston:We naturally react to it and reject it. And I think our democratic voting system also works to eliminate extremes. So I'm hopeful that we can move past it, but it's going to require significant political leadership and ideally a bipartisan political approach that says Australia is worth more than petty division, particularly as we navigate regional conflict and increasing global tension. My thanks to Josh, to Nicole, and of course to you for listening. For the very latest on the Sydney investigation, just head to skynews.com. The Daily is back again tomorrow.

18:17Nicole Johnston:a new podcast from NBC News with me, your host, Yasmin Vasugian. We'll take a deep dive into the day's top stories with NBC News' trusted journalists. It's a fresh take that's sharp, thoughtful, and it's informative, bringing you closer to the headlines and conversations that are shaping our world. From the front page to the zeitgeist, here's The Scoop from NBC News. Listen daily wherever you get your podcasts.