Few people walking past the bakery understood the sinister meaning behind the shapes on the windows.
The inverted red triangles had been painted on the front of celebrity chef Ed Halmagyi’s inner Sydney business one night last October.
Like every Jew, Mr Halmagyi knew what they meant — he had been designated a target the same way Jewish businesses were earmarked in the lead-up to Germany’s infamous Kristallnacht.
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The western world used to welcome the sight of the red symbol; in World War One it was adopted by British-backed Arabs who fought against the Ottoman Empire.
In 2023, the upside-down triangle was used by Hamas to identify Israeli military targets. It was soon adopted by agents of anti-Semitism around the world.
In 2023, the upside-down triangle was used by Hamas to identify Israeli military targets. Credit: picture alliance/dpa/picture alliance via Getty I
Mr Halmagyi is closing his Surry Hills bakery. The Better Homes and Gardens stalwart can’t guarantee the safety of his staff.
“After two years of almost ceaseless anti-Semitic harassment, vandalism and intimidation directed at our little bakery, we have to be realistic about the threats that exist going forwards,” he said.
The slow burn of intimidation he had experienced over the past two years reached a horrifying tipping point at 6.42pm on Sunday, when Naveed and Sajid Akram allegedly clicked the safety catches off at Bondi Beach.
Academic Suzanne Rutland believes contemporary anti-Semitism begins as hostility to the religion of Judaism, mutates into racial vilification and morphs into political anti-Semitism.
It is that final form, in which criticisms of Israel’s Gaza offensive spiral into irrational hatred of all Jews, that has infested popular culture.
“Often referred to as the ‘new anti-Semitism’, this third manifestation constitutes a virulent strain in both high schools and universities,” Professor Rutland said.
Many people think the genesis of Sunday’s massacre was Israel’s invasion of Gaza and its perceived outsized response to the October 7 atrocity.
Others believe the clock started ticking on May 14, 1948, when the declaration of the State of Israel codified the dispossession of the Palestinian people.
Both are wrong; the hatred of Jews can be traced back to the Roman Empire.
The first attempt at genocide came during the Kitos War of 115BC, when the Roman Army attacked Jewish communities in Egypt.
The failed attempt at cleansing God’s chosen people was followed by moves by different emperors to expel Jews from Rome, first over fears they were trying to convert the city’s population and second because many refused to bend their knees to the Roman cult.
The death by crucifixion of Jesus Christ entrenched the world’s hatred towards Abraham’s descendants. Blaming the Jews for the death of Christ, a charge renounced by the Catholic Church only 60 years ago, became a catchall for generations of national leaders.
The movement reached a macabre crescendo with Adolf Hitler’s industrialised death campaign. The Holocaust shocked the world, and the world said ‘never again’.
But hoping two words could put a full stop to a millennia of bigotry was a fool’s errand. On Sunday, the tide of history reached Bondi Beach.
It was the deadliest time Jews had been targeted in Australia but not the first. They were regularly demonised in newspapers in the 19th century and the wave of migrants who fled the Third Reich and settled Down Under were openly vilified by politicians on both sides.
History suggests anti-Semitism will survive Government action. The best Anthony Albanese can hope for is taking the most violent edges off the world’s longest hatred.
Public distrust of Jews after the war was prevalent enough to trigger a policy response and the Australian Government introduced a series of regulations designed to limit the proportion of Jewish citizens to 0.5 per cent of the population.
The cap was later lifted but Jews are today nonetheless scarce, with just 120,000 calling Australia home. That rarity afforded bigots the opportunity to go about their business without ever having to come face-to-face with their victims.
Australian Centre for Jewish Civilisation director David Slucki said Australians often only saw information about the community through media.
“What they do tend to see of Jews ends up being when things get reported in the press and in the media and online so it ends up revolving around things like victimhood or debates over Israel or debates around anti-Semitism,” he said.
“It takes hold because there’s this gap in between where people just don’t actually know who or what Jews are, or what it means to be Jewish.”
The current brand of new anti-Semitism evolved swiftly because hateful thoughts could so easily become abhorrent words posted to social media.
Two days after the October 7 terror attack on Israel, anti-Semitism in Australia broke free of the internet and was writ large on the steps of the Sydney Opera House.
The pro-Palestine rally was attended by people crowd were recorded shouting “f… the Jews”.
A few months later, toxic words at that pro-Palestine rally became toxic actions. The increasingly frenetic descent towards Sunday’s depravity had begun.
In February, 2024, the personal details of about 600 Jewish Australian creatives and academics on a private Whatsapp thread were doxxed online by activists. The leak shared names, workplaces and social media accounts, leading to personal threats.
Mount Scopus Memorial College in Burwood, Melbourne, was targeted in a vandalism attack in May. The words “Jew die” was spray‑painted on the fence of the school.
On October 13, the red triangles were painted on Mr Halmagyi’s bakery and a note saying “be careful” was slid under the front door.
Then, in a move straight out of the nazi playbook, came the desecration of the synagogues.
On December 6, two masked men broke into the Adass Israel Synagogue in Melbourne and set it alight. On January 11, two synagogues in Sydney were spray-painted with neo-nazi graffiti. Five months later, arsonists struck at the East Melbourne Hebrew Congregation while worshippers were inside for Shabbat.
On January 21, Australian anti-Semitism was on the world stage when two nurses at a Sydney hospital appeared in a TikTok video, threatening to kill Jewish or Israeli patients and refusing to treat them.
As the tempo of hate increased, Jewish leaders urged more action by the Albanese Government. They felt they were ignored.
In August, about 90,000 people marched across the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Jihadist flags and a portrait of armed Iranian dictator Ayatollah Ali Khamenei could be seen in the sea of protesters, who were chanting “Death, death to the IDF” and “death, death to Netanyahu”.
And then Sunday at Bondi.
A make shift memorial at Bondi Pavillion. Credit: Damian Shaw NewsWire/NCA NewsWire
Mr Slucki is sceptical about whether there was anything the Government could have done to stop the massacre.
“Obviously one of the pieces of criticism that’s come at the Government is that it didn’t adopt the special envoy’s recommendations quickly enough,” he said.
“I don’t know what would’ve prevented the kind of thing we saw on Sunday night in Bondi, that kind of mass shooting, because terrorism has been famously difficult to stop.”
Mr Slucki believes there is a path away from hate.
“We need to think about a range of different kinds of measures, legislative measures,” he said. “Education is hugely important, but not on its own sufficient.
“Community building and partnership — and we need to really go back to strengthening the multicultural society we live in. I think we’ve maybe lost that a bit, that this is one of the great strengths of Australia and its democracy.”
History suggests anti-Semitism will survive Government action.
The best Anthony Albanese can hope for is taking the most violent edges off the world’s longest hatred.
