The Current - What we know about the Bondi Beach terror attack

Episode Date: December 15, 2025

Two gunmen attacked the Jewish holiday event, Hanukkah by the Sea on Bondi Beach, Australia on Sunday. Hundreds were there to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah. At least 15 people were killed, and dozens more were injured. One of the attackers was also killed, the other is in critical condition. We talk to Ben Knight from the vigil in Sydney. He is a senior reporter for ABC News Victoria, and a former ABC correspondent based in Jerusalem and Washington. We also talk to Rabbi Steve Wernick, the Senior Rabbi of Beth Tzedec Congregation in Toronto about how the pain being felt in Australia is reverberating in Jewish communities around the world.

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Hello, I'm Matt Galloway, and this is the current podcast. Yesterday in Australia, as the sun was setting on Bondi Beach, hundreds gathered to celebrate the first day of Hanukkah, and then the sound of gunshots. I seen like a kid, like she was like maybe eight years old. She got injured in the leg, and she was crying, and she was on the ground. I was holding somebody's child, because he was screaming. I was saving this child.

And everyone is running down. A two police officers lying down on the ground. next to me, I'd fall down, and the blood was coming from my hand. Two gunmen attacked the Jewish holiday event called Hanukkah by the sea, killing at least 15 people and injuring dozens more. One of the attackers was also killed. The other is in critical recognition. Ben Knight is a senior reporter for ABC News, Victoria,

former ABC correspondent based in Jerusalem and Washington. He is in Sydney on Bondi Beach. Ben, hello. Hi, Mac. You are there at Bondi Beach, at the vigil that's been, building since they're shooting. Just describe the scene there if you would. It's thinned out. It sits late in the evening here in Bondi and there's a chill wind blowing off the ocean, but there are still people here just standing and looking at what is a massive ring of flowers

that has just grown from very, very small beginnings early this morning. I don't know how it started, but clearly someone had the idea or the urge to bring a bunch of flowers and lay them in front of the famous Bondi Pavilion, and then someone else did the same thing, and in fact, our Prime Minister, Anthony Albanese, turned up quite early this morning and added what must have been the fifth or sixth bunch, and it's just grown since then.

And of course, so has the number of people here as well. It's pretty thin at the moment. I think it'll probably be winding up for the evening soon, but at its peak, I'd say there have been thousands of people here today, Not necessarily all at the same time. People come, they might lay a wreath, they might lay a bunch of flowers, they might do nothing. But what they all do is just stand and look and take it in and then maybe go off and sit on the grassy hill and stay for 20 minutes, maybe an hour and then move off.

And it's just been like that all day. It's ebbed and it's flowed. It's been very quiet mostly. On occasion, someone will start singing a song in Hebrew. other people will join in, and then it'll go quiet again. Then as evening fell, we had a lot of people here, and particularly people from the Jewish community lighting the candle for the second night of Hanukkah, the night after the horror,

almost 24 hours to the minute. What do we know, I mentioned at least 15 people have been killed and many, many more injured. What do we know about those who were shot in this attack? We don't know a lot yet. We're starting to hear some names. We know that their ages range from 10 years old to 87 years old. There was a Holocaust survivor who has been killed.

These are people who migrated to Australia many years ago. There are people who are born here. It was a family event. And it was, I'm looking at the crime scene at the moment. It's a very large area. And what you can see in there, is the detritus of what happened. People's cars are still parked in there.

They won't be able to go back in there until police say that it's open to the public again. But it's not just that. I think the thing that really hits you is you see the rubbish from the picnics that people didn't have time to clear up as they fled. There will be bags, there will be hats, there will be phones and wallets and keys

just in there and you can see them, along, of course, with the more confronting images of the pools of blood. So we're going to find out, a lot more about the stories of the people who died. And as you say, there are more than 20 who are being treated in hospital around Sydney at the moment. What do we know about the attackers at this point? We know their names. We know that they are Navid Akram and Sadjid Akram, that they are a father and son, a 50-year-old man and his 24-year-old son. The father migrated to Australia

some years ago, but his son was born here, not long after the father arrived. a lot more that we want to know obviously about this. And there's a lot more we want to know about why Australia's Domestic Intelligence Agency ASIO apparently in 2019 recognized that the Sun was, had some links to a group linked to ISIS or Islamic State that were apparently preparing a terror attack in Sydney that was prevented by the authorities. Now, for some reason After that, the ASEO determined that the son was not a potential threat, and that's where it left it. So, I mean, the father, we know, had a gun licence and owned six firearms. And I think that's also been shocking to Australians.

As you would be well aware, in 1996, we had the Port Arthur Massacre, which resulted in massive changes to Australia's gun laws. They have long had broad popular support since then. And Australians have a certain amount of pride in that because of the lack of mass shootings in Australia. So when it turns out that someone who has a son who was potentially on a watch list who holds six weapons who lives in a suburb of Sydney, that's raised some pretty big questions.

So we're going to want to know about that as well. There's this extraordinary video of a bystander who tackled one of the gunmen. I mean, this is a horror in terms of the number of people who have been killed and injured, but the senses it could have been much worse but for the actions of this bystander. What do we know about him? His name is Ahmed al-Ahmad. He sells fruit and veggies.

He's in his 40s, and right now he's in hospital having recovered from his first surgery. What we understand will be the first of a significant number of surgeries. He has suffered life-changing injuries, but I'm sure many of your listeners will have seen the video of him. It is incredible. It's probably the most compelling piece of video I've seen in a long, long time. You see him creeping up behind one of the shooters and disarming him, turning the gun on the shooter. And then it's after that that he suffered his own gunshot wounds. He's been shot several times. He has fragments of boards in his bones.

So he's had life-changing injuries, but he, in his hospital bed, had a visit from the New South Wales Premier today. I'm sure there will be many more lining up to just pay. their respects to what is an incredible act of bravery. It was the New South Wales Premier, Chris Minns, who said, you know, essentially this has been awful, but that is the spirit that we want to, we want to think of ourselves as rather than, rather than the other. How are Australian politicians and police responding to this? This is, I mean, it's not just the fact that it's a mass shooting, it's been called an

act of terrorism, an act of terrorism, specifically targeting the Jewish community. How are politicians responding to that? Well, initially, I think the Australian Prime Minister was on the back foot a bit, particularly because there's been a huge rise in anti-Semitic attacks in Australia over the past two years, from double digits to nearly 2000 a year. It's been significant and it's been obviously very concerning. And in fact, earlier this year, the head of AZO, our domestic intelligence agency said he regarded anti-Semitism as being the agency's top priority for threats to life. One of the things that the government did was to appoint a special envoy to combat anti-Semitism. First time that's ever happened. So that was regarded as being good and proactive.

The envoy then produced a report in July of this year saying, here is my blueprint on how. how to combat anti-Semitism in Australia. There's been some criticism from the community even before this, that the government has not officially responded to it. And certainly that came up on the day of the shooting, and the Prime Minister, as I say, was probably on the back foot a bit on that one. Today he has come out and been a lot stronger

and said, okay, here is what we actually have done and listed a few things. But I think also one of the other things that's happened is there's been a very, very quick meeting of the Prime Minister. and of the state premiers saying, okay, we need to tighten our gun laws now. So that is probably going to happen. We're going to probably see that people will, there'll be a limit on the number of guns that

people can have. Gun licences won't just be granted for life. They will be reviewed because, as they say, people change, people radicalise. But the other questions obviously come for ASIO, the Domestic Intelligence Agency and how this one got through. Ben, appreciate this. Thank you very much. Thanks, Mike.

Ben Knight, is a senior reporter for ABC News, Victoria. a former ABC correspondent based in Jerusalem and Washington. He was in Sydney at Bondi Beach at the vigil that has grown there. The PWHL is back for the third season of heart-stopping women's hockey. And this season, there are two new teams looking to make their mark on the ice, the Seattle Torrent and Vancouver Golden Eyes. When the world's best women's hockey players face off, anything can happen. Will the Minnesota Frost achieve a three-peat?

Will a new team take home the trophy? There's only one way to find out. Watch the PWH for free on CBCJ. The pain being felt in Australia is reverberating throughout Jewish communities around the world, including here in Canada. Rabbi Steve Wernick is the senior rabbi of Beth Zedek congregation in Toronto. It is the largest synagogue in Canada.

He's with me in our Toronto studio. Good morning to you. Good morning, Matt. Thank you for being here. You, like many of us, will have woken up yesterday to the news of this horror in Australia. what went through your mind? Truthfully, not surprise.

If you've been paying attention to the rise of anti-Semitism around the world, especially in Western countries, for the last 10 years, and certainly it's spiked since October 7th. There's been an expectation, so to speak, in the Jewish community around the world, that these kinds of events and terror attacks were possible and probably probable. But after that, it was just concerned for people that I personally knew that were in Australia,

colleagues of mine that are conservative rabbis, besorti rabbis in the country, people that I've met over the course of my career and my life, knowing that many members of my own community have relationships and people that they know in Australia. So the first thing was for me just to reach out and text and contact people that I knew and make sure that they were okay, check in on their emotional, mental, spiritual health after the attack. And then also I started fielding calls almost immediately from members of the synagogue, expressing their fear and concern about not only Australia, but about our own circumstance here in Canada. What do you tell them? I was speaking with a friend yesterday who said, In many ways, it feels like an attack on all of us.

That's what she said. What do you tell people who say that to you? Well, first of all, I think it is an attack on all of us. This is not the first attack that has happened to the Jewish people on a sacred day. It's becoming a pattern. October 7th was the holiday of Simchat Torah, the holiday of celebrating the Torah. This is the first night of Hanukkah. There have been attacks in the past on Purim and on other sacred days.

we're only 16 million people in a 7 billion world, people world. So it certainly feels like an attack on all of us, and especially because of the lines of familial and personal relationships that people have. First and foremost, I seek to listen, to comfort, to hold up people who are going through some sort of trauma and shock from the incident itself. And secondly, to provide a note of hope, though anti-Semitism is on the rise, the world is different for Jews today than it was in the 1930s and certainly in 1940s, and that we have agency, and that the Hanukkah story itself is a story of the few not only surviving but thriving over the many and of light pushing away the darkness. Is there a real fear that something like this could happen here? Absolutely. You know, all the signs in Canada are the same as they were in Australia.

What do you mean? There have been attempted fire bombings at synagogues in Montreal. There's one synagogue here, the GTA that has been attacked 10 times since October 7th. There's been vandalism. There's been property destroyed in Jewish businesses. There's been shots fired at a Jewish girl. day school. Those shots, though those shots were fired after hours, still, right? Shots were fired. Shots were fired at a day school, at a school. You look at the rhetoric

that is taking place in the streets of some within the pro-Palestinian community. You know, you just put it all together in an escalation. just seems inevitable, which is why we've been begging both elected and civic leaders to speak out and to do more than just share their thoughts and prayers after events like this happen, but to hold accountable people that are engaged in hateful speech, because hateful speech when it comes to the Jewish people almost always results in violence. You put out a statement in the wake of this shooting saying, and you know that there will be, and I'm sure you've engaged with leaders and that the police.

police services, that police are saying there will be greater security and greater enforcement, increased security around synagogues over the course of the holidays and beyond, but the statement said that security alone is not enough. What more are you looking for? As I said previously, we're looking for civic and elected officials to marginalize again anti-Semitism. What would you want to hear? I mean, the thoughts and prayers have come from those elected leaders. It's not just condemnations right there. Robin Urbock wrote recently in the Globe and Mail that we have hate crime legislation on the books. It's not being implemented or enforced. The city continues to allow protests in support of Palestine to go through Jewish neighborhoods. If the concern is Israel's government's actions within Gaza, the rightful address for those protests is the consulate in Toronto or the embassy in Toronto. It's not Jewish neighborhoods.

Every Sunday there's a protest on Shepard and Lawrence. Enough is enough. You know, when we allow the hateful rhetoric and the protests that are much more than simply supporting Palestinians in Gaza and war is terrible. to minimize the impact of the war, but when we allow those protests to be directed towards the Jewish people and not towards the Israeli government, that's when anti-Zionism becomes anti-Semitism. And it needs to not only be condemned, it needs to be stopped. Are you optimistic that will happen? I mean, one of the things, it's a dark time and there's a lot of bad news. You put out that statement, and you ended by saying, with sorrow, with resolve, but also with

hope. So where is the hope live in you? The hope is, The hope is from the long view of Jewish history that after 4,000 years of suffering the greatest highs and the greatest lows of any human being in history, Jewish people are still here, and we are thriving. We're thriving in Israel. We're thriving in all the communities that allow us to live in peace, and we have been for the last 80 years. So the hope comes from the fact that Even the story of the Maccabees and the story of Hanukkah is a story of a larger society trying to destroy the Jewish society and the Jews fighting back sometimes when they have to physically defend themselves, but also by leaning into our Torah, to our values, to our

tradition, to our practices. So that's the basis of the hope. And also the hope comes from that, you know, this two. will end. The question that leaders have to ask is, how do they want it to end? Does Bondi become a turning point for Australia? Does it become a wake-up call for Canada and for other Western countries? Or does that only happen when we ourselves suffer a tragedy here? So the Jewish community has to be both prepared to defend itself. It has to advocate for accountability against hate rhetoric that leads to violence and it has to lean into its traditions and values and its holidays like Hanukkah

to provide hope for the future. What about beyond the community? I mean, again, this is this is a moment you said it could be a moment a turning point. In the last couple of minutes that we have, how do you, how do you, what's the word to people beyond? Just in terms of creating a shared sense of humanity, do you know what I mean? The people see each other and that we understand how to move beyond this in a meaningful way? Well, those people that are allies that have been previously silent, they need to speak up. We do have allies within the larger community, and they've been terrific. I received several phone calls from elected leaders and from religious leaders of primarily

the Christian community, the Muslim-Jewish dialogue, has unfortunately broken down since October 7th. but people of good conscience, you just can't sit on the sidelines. If you care about humanity, anti-Semitism is one of the oldest hatreds in the world. And if we really believe that this is not Canada, then people who believe that need to be part of the solution and have to get off the sidelines. I appreciate you being here this morning. Thank you very much. Thank you. Rabbi Steve Wernick is the senior rabbi at Bethsaat of Congregation in Toronto. That is the largest synagogue in Canada. You've been listening to the current podcast. My name is Matt Galloway. Thanks for listening. I'll talk to you soon. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca.ca slash podcasts.