Sajid and Naveed Akram committed the Bondi Beach massacre. But Jewish leaders want the royal commission into the attack to investigate two other men at the centre of anti-Israel activism in Sydney, Joshua Lees and Wissam Haddad.
How far the inquiry extends beyond the six minutes of violence of December 14 could have profound implications for Australia.
Jewish groups want former High Court judge Virginia Bell to investigate how immigration may have imported Middle Eastern religious hatreds onto previously peaceful Australian streets. Australia’s large Muslim community and anti-Israel movement want it to find out why the attack was not stopped by Australian Federal Police or Australian Security Intelligence Organisation.
Sign up to The Nightly’s newsletters.
Get the first look at the digital newspaper, curated daily stories and breaking headlines delivered to your inbox.
By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.
The lawyer who will decide how much to expend of the inquiry’s precious time on either problem is one Jewish leaders hoped would never get the job, former High Court judge Virginia Bell.
On Thursday, Anthony Albanese caved into huge public pressure and agreed on federal royal commission to replace one planned by New South Wales.
Barrister James Allsop, who ran the Federal Court from 2013 to 2023, was the first choice of the main Jewish groups, no doubt reassured by his public advocacy. Not going ahead with a royal commission, he wrote a week ago, “imperils the future of the nation”.
Those same groups resisted the government’s preferred candidate, Ms Bell, because of her background in left-wing inner-city legal activism — circles perceived to be naturally sympathetic to the anti-Israel movement.
Former treasurer Josh Frydenberg, an early royal commission advocate, on Wednesday evening pre-emptively criticised the selection of Ms Bell, whose appointment was first reported by news.com.au reporter Sam Maiden.
“After more than two years of unprecedented hate, harassment and violence directed towards the Jewish community, culminating in Australia’s deadliest terrorist attack at Bondi Beach it is unthinkable the Prime Minister would choose a Commissioner that did not have the total confidence of the Jewish community,” Mr Frydenberg posted on X.
Scope and scale
Amid lobbying over who will conduct the inquiry, less attention has been paid in public to the important question of its scope, which will be determined by a document known as the terms of reference. That document gives Jewish groups want they wanted: an inquiry that can go far beyond the massacre to explain why Jewish primary schools in Australia require armed guards.
Australian-Jewish leaders hope Ms Bell, who has been given a year for her work, will investigate two centres of activism they believe have been working since the Israel-Gaza war began in 2023 to turn Australians against their community. These malevolent forces fostered an environment that led to murder in Bondi, they argue.
The most visible were the now-suspended weekly anti-Israel marches organised by left-wing activists with support from some unions. In Sydney, they were led by Mr Lees, a middle-aged Marxist responsible for convincing 90,000 Australians to march over the Sydney Harbour Bridge last August, a show of force credited with shifting Australian policy in favour of the Palestinians.
The Sydney Harbour Bridge march on August 3. Credit: Jeremy Piper/News Corp Australia
The other force was less visible but just as dangerous, they argue. Islamic extremists such as Mr Haddad proselytise to marginalised men and women and encouraged them to blame Jews for the plight of Muslims, including Naveed Akram. The son in the father-and-son shooting team walked the streets of Western Sydney in the 2010s with a group associated with Mr Haddad, according to media reports based on social media posts.
Mr Haddad, a carpet layer, is one of the city’s most notorious Jew-haters. In four speeches after the bombing began in Gaza at his personal Islamic centre in Bankstown, the Federal Court found he repeated anti-Jewish abuse common for centuries, including that they are filthy, murdering cowards who love money and wealth and cannot be trusted.
Jews and Muslims are in an eternal conflict that will end when the Jews are killed, Mr Haddad said, according to a July decision by the court in a civil case filed by Peter Wertheim, one of the Jewish leaders negotiating with the government over the royal commission.
“Towards the end of times when the Muslims will be fighting the Jews, the trees will speak, the stone will speak, and they will say, O Muslim, O believer, there is a Yahudi (Jew) behind me, come and kill him,” Mr Haddad told fellow Muslims who gathered for a prayer meeting on a Friday evening in November, 2023.
(Mr Haddad couldn’t be reached for comment. Mr Lees’ group, the Palestine Action Group Sydney, did not respond to a request for comment.)
Warning flags
On August 3, during the Sydney Harbour Bridge march, professional photographer Andrew Quilty saw a group of men in keffiyeh head scarfs walking with Islamic-script flags. Quilty, who worked for many years in Afghanistan, recognised one as the Taliban flag. The other was similar but not exactly the same as the standard of ISIS, the notorious Muslim terror group. Among the men was Mr Haddad, who Quilty did not know but photographed because the group was so striking.
Mr Haddad’s presence was a link between the public protests now banned in NSW and the massacre — a connection Jewish leaders want explored and explained to the public.
That’s not enough, though. Like the accused Naveed Akram, Mr Haddad was born in Australia to immigrant parents. To understand how anti-Semitism took root in Australia, a royal commission might have to review a immigration program covering generations M an approach that has created a population of some 800,000 Muslims in a country where the Christian Lord’s Prayer is still recited every day in Parliament.
Many live in electorates held by senior Labor politicians, including Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke and Education Minister Jason Clare. They do not want to be blamed for the Akrams’ actions, and the prime minister will not want hundreds of thousands of Labor voters made to feel collectively responsible for the deeds of two mad men.
Then there are the other Australians — many highly educated and influential — who oppose what they call Zionism. Some Jews regard attacks on Zionism, the movement for a Jewish state among Arab ones, as excuses for anti-Jewish sentiment. Others, including some left-wing Jews, say criticism of Israel or the Israeli government is an important right in any democracy.
Older universities and the ABC are often accused of fostering anti-Zionism, which is why Jewish advocates such as Colin Rubenstein, the executive director of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council, want the royal commission to investigate “efforts to target and exclude ‘Zionists’ and Jews from all public spaces” and “how education, media, and political rhetoric contribute to radicalisation”.
With 15 bodies, mostly Jews, freshly buried or cremated, the Jewish community feels there may never be a better chance to eradicate an ancient stain that has reached shores far from Mecca and Jerusalem. But a royal commission that goes as deep as they want could reverberate in unpredictable ways from Bondi to Canberra, which may explain why the prime minister was so reluctant to create one.
Joshua Lees of the Palestine Action Group Sydney is a lead organiser of anti-Israel protests. Credit: News Corp Australia
