At Sydney’s Bondi Pavilion, where hundreds of mourners had gathered on Wednesday night just metres away from the site of the country’s worst-ever terrorist attack, Rabbi Yossi Friedman paused his address to point to a passing aeroplane.
It was carrying the coffin of Reuven Morrison, one of the victims of last Sunday’s attack, back to Melbourne to be buried, he said, as the sound of the aircraft filled the air.
Videos posted online after the attack showed Morrison charging at one of the two gunmen who had opened fire on a Jewish community event marking the first night of Hanukkah. Morrison threw a brick at the attacker before he was shot dead, one of 15 people killed and dozens more injured.
The massacre has shaken Australia to its core, tarnishing its image as the “lucky country” and turning one of its most beloved landmarks into a “slaughterhouse”, in the words of Jewish community leaders.
It has also left the country’s leaders, law enforcement and intelligence services rushing to explain how such an attack occurred in a country where gun violence is rare, and trying to maintain a frayed social fabric already strained by two years of rising public tension over Israel’s war against Hamas in Gaza.
Rabbi Yossi Friedman speaks at a memorial by the Bondi Pavilion © Mark Baker/AP
Sorrow and frustration have spread well beyond the Jewish community as thousands of mourners and sympathisers gathered at Bondi Beach this week to lay flowers and share in prayers.
Voula, a Greek Orthodox woman who declined to give her full name, arrived at the beach using a walking frame and assisted by a carer. She had travelled more than two hours bearing flowers for the youngest victim of the attack, 10-year-old Matilda.
“I have been shaking for three days,” said Voula.
Matilda’s parents, who had migrated from Ukraine, gave their Australia-born daughter “the most Australian name” they could think of — one shared by the country’s unofficial national anthem and women’s football team — her father told a vigil at Bondi this week.
“Remember the name, remember her,” he added.
Tributes for Matilda, the youngest victim of the attack © Steve Markham/AP
As Bondi Beach reopened on Friday for the first time since the attack, paddle boarders swam out at dawn to form a ring off the coast, where they held a minute’s silence on the water.
David Solsky, a Bondi local who organised the “paddle out”, said it was a sign of the “broader community” coming together.
“Hopefully the healing process can start here and we can get Bondi [back] to its glory very, very quickly,” he told local broadcaster Nine.
Tensions were still running high days after the attack. Across town in Western Sydney late on Thursday, armed police ran two cars off the road and arrested seven men after responding to an alert to a possible threat to public safety — potentially in Bondi — from another government agency. The men were later released.
For Prime Minister Anthony Albanese and his Labor government, the response to the country’s worst mass shooting in 30 years could prove to be a defining moment, as with the Christchurch mosque attack in New Zealand and its impact on Jacinda Ardern’s leadership in 2019.
The government has already moved to tighten laws regulating gun ownership and hate speech, and made it easier for visa applications to be cancelled or rejected for anyone found to be inciting hatred.
“When people come to Australia, you leave old divisions and hatred at the door,” Albanese said on Thursday. “That is what overwhelmingly Australians want to see.”
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, centre, at The Great Synagogue in Sydney on Friday © Dan Himbrechts/EPA/Shutterstock
The state of New South Wales has also put forward legislation allowing police to block public protests within two weeks of terror attacks. Chris Minns, NSW premier, said the move would deliver “the public’s expectation that we can have a summer of calm, rather than one of division and hatred and protest”.
The state is also looking to ban the black flag of Islamist terror group Isis, two of which were found in a vehicle used by the suspected gunmen.
Malcolm Turnbull, a former prime minister and former MP for the area that includes Bondi, said hate speech laws needed to be enforced, but cautioned against rushing through legislation on complex issues.
“Changes need to be carefully considered to balance free speech and public safety,” he said. “The challenge is to be clear in this feverish social media environment public debate, on the Middle East or any other issue, cannot cross the line into vilification of Jewish Australians.”
Surfers and swimmers at a tribute at Bondi Beach on Friday © Mick Tsikas/AAP Image/AP
But Albanese has already come under pressure, with the opposition Liberal party criticising his handling of rising antisemitism over the past two years. Synagogues, Jewish-owned businesses and Jewish politicians in the country have been targeted.
Julian Leeser, the shadow education minister who attended multiple funerals of Bondi victims over the past week, said the increasing hostilities threatened Australia’s closely held social cohesion.
Nearly half of Australians have a parent who was born overseas, and tens of thousands of Holocaust survivors moved to the country after the second world war.
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“About two and a half years ago, I would have said Australia was the exception to all the rules on antisemitism,” Leeser said. “Now, it’s a hotbed of antisemitism, and that’s because people haven’t stamped it out quickly enough.”
For now, Australia is moving to unite.
More than a thousand lifeguards and surfers met on Bondi Beach on Saturday morning to form a human chain as a symbol of unity — a scene that would be replicated across beaches in Australia, according to Liz Webb, president of the Bondi surf club.
“So many of us use Bondi Beach. It’s our place,” she said. “The board riders, the surfers, the 5am running groups, the salties [swimmers], the nippers [children’s surf club]. It’s a big step for us to go back on the beach.”
