The Bondi massacre and the rise of anti-semitism
The News Agents
Global
4.1 • 5.4K Ratings
🗓️ 15 December 2025
⏱️ 35 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
As the sun was setting on the first night of Hanukah, a father and his son opened fire on Jewish people celebrating on Sydney’s Bondi Beach. 16 people were left dead - forty remain in hospital, including the hero who tried to disarm one of the IS-linked terrorists. Jews around the world have been sounding the alarm on the rise of anti-semitism. They believe their fear has gone unheeded. Will this tragedy change anything? And how should governments police free speech that intimidates entire communities?
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | The Newsagents podcast is brought to you by HSBC UK, opening up a world of opportunity. |
| 0:09.2 | This is a global player original podcast. |
| 0:40.7 | That is the Hanukkah song Mao Tzu. It's a song of faith. It's a song of thanksgiving and of hope. It recalls historical struggles and survival. And it is the song that Jews around the world will sing every night of Hanukkah. |
| 0:48.6 | And it's a song that has gained a particular significance after the terrorist attack on Bondi Beach, which interrupted this moment of joy and of Thanksgiving and of prayer and turned it into a scene of murder. |
| 0:57.6 | Welcome to the newsagents. |
| 1:03.7 | The Newsagents. |
| 1:05.4 | It's John. |
| 1:06.3 | It's Emily. |
| 1:07.5 | And yesterday morning I woke up to a WhatsApp message from my son who lives in Sydney, who lives in a place called Bronte, which is probably less than a mile from Bondi Beach, saying everyone was okay. |
| 1:22.8 | There's reports of an incident at Bondi. |
| 1:25.8 | And I couldn't find anything about it then, but gradually bit by bit, the picture became clearer. |
| 1:31.3 | On the horror as well of what this was also became apparent. |
| 1:38.3 | And it's kind of shocking and, you know, my family was okay |
| 1:42.3 | and I suspect there were an awful lot of other people from around the world who either live in that area or on holiday or backpacking in that area who were also sending frantic messages home saying they were fine and that they had been unaffected. |
| 1:58.9 | But for a community and there is a sizable Jewish community |
| 2:03.1 | in the eastern suburbs of Sydney, it has been a moment of horror. And also, I think there was a |
| 2:11.7 | growing feeling that anti-Semitism, since October the 7th, has been getting worse. And, you know, there are a number of synagogues |
| 2:20.0 | and Jewish schools where you have seen the security gradually being ramped up. I think an awful |
| 2:26.2 | lot of people from Europe moved to Australia because they thought it was somehow 10,000 miles away |
| 2:34.0 | from all of this. |
| 2:35.7 | And I think there is a really fundamental point in which, you know, Sydney does seem a long way away. |
| 2:41.6 | And whenever I'm there with my son and you're watching TV and you're watching something about Ukraine or whatever it happens to be, |
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