Reflections on Bondi Beach

Mona Charen
Thu, 18 Dec 2025 12:53:37 -0800
Opinion

When I go to synagogue, I always smile and wave at the armed police officers stationed outside. I want them to know they're appreciated, but also, at some level, I guess it's fair to say that I'm trying to ingratiate myself so that the cop will want to put his or her life on the line to save us if a gunman decides to open fire on or torch our congregation, as happened in Pittsburgh (2018), Poway (2019), Miami (2019), Monsey (2019), Halle, Germany (2019), Colleyville (2022), Jerusalem (2023), Djerba, Tunisia (2023), Berlin, Germany (2023), Yerevan, Armenia (2023), Rouen, France (2024), Athens, Greece (2024), Melbourne, Australia (2024), Los Angeles (2024), Manchester, U.K. (2024), and New York (2025).

That list contains only the successful attacks on houses of worship in recent years. It omits the thwarted ones, as well as attacks like the sniper killings of a young engaged couple (one an Israeli diplomat, the other an American citizen employee of the Israeli embassy) who were exiting the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., the arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's home, the desecration of cemeteries, the harassment of Jewish students, the Boulder, Colorado, man who attacked a demonstration calling for the release of hostages with a spray of Molotov cocktails, or of hundreds of menacing threats like the London "pro-Palestine" demonstration that featured loudspeakers broadcasting, "F—- the Jews. Rape their daughters."

Antisemitism is a poison like radon, always present below the surface in low doses, but sometimes rising to lethal concentrations. Except that radon, being colorless and odorless, is hard to detect without special equipment. Antisemitism, by contrast, is unsubtle and requires deliberate choices to unsee.
Updated: Fri Dec 19, 2025

When I go to synagogue, I always smile and wave at the armed police officers stationed outside. I want them to know they're appreciated, but also, at some level, I guess it's fair to say that I'm trying to ingratiate myself so that the cop will want to put his or her life on the line to save us if a gunman decides to open fire on or torch our congregation, as happened in Pittsburgh (2018), Poway (2019), Miami (2019), Monsey (2019), Halle, Germany (2019), Colleyville (2022), Jerusalem (2023), Djerba, Tunisia (2023), Berlin, Germany (2023), Yerevan, Armenia (2023), Rouen, France (2024), Athens, Greece (2024), Melbourne, Australia (2024), Los Angeles (2024), Manchester, U.K. (2024), and New York (2025).

That list contains only the successful attacks on houses of worship in recent years. It omits the thwarted ones, as well as attacks like the sniper killings of a young engaged couple (one an Israeli diplomat, the other an American citizen employee of the Israeli embassy) who were exiting the Jewish Museum in Washington, D.C., the arson attack on Pennsylvania Gov. Josh Shapiro's home, the desecration of cemeteries, the harassment of Jewish students, the Boulder, Colorado, man who attacked a demonstration calling for the release of hostages with a spray of Molotov cocktails, or of hundreds of menacing threats like the London "pro-Palestine" demonstration that featured loudspeakers broadcasting, "F—- the Jews. Rape their daughters."

Antisemitism is a poison like radon, always present below the surface in low doses, but sometimes rising to lethal concentrations. Except that radon, being colorless and odorless, is hard to detect without special equipment. Antisemitism, by contrast, is unsubtle and requires deliberate choices to unsee.

We have whole industries devoted to unseeing antisemitism and other outrages perpetrated by our ideological allies, and those same industries instantly become rage machines ready to exploit every act of violence when committed by ideological foes.

In this competitive atrocity era, no good massacre goes to waste. In the hours after the mass killing of Jewish Australians at Bondi Beach on the first night of Hanukkah, right-wing rage merchants like Sen. Tommy Tuberville called for the mass deportation of all Muslims from the United States. In a characteristically nuanced take, he tweeted: "Stop worrying about offending the pearl clutchers. We've got to SEND THEM HOME NOW or we'll become the United Caliphate of America."

Sen. Lindsey Graham blamed Obama and Biden. And Rep. Randy Fine weighed in with this analysis: "It is time for a Muslim travel ban, radical deportations of all mainstream Muslim legal and illegal immigrants, and citizenship revocations wherever possible."

It's possible that these guys are letting their amygdalas overwhelm their prefrontal cortexes. Violence does excite the fear/anger receptors in our brains and prepare us to respond in kind. When we see blood, we see red.

But people also have judgment and self-control. They aren't lab rats robotically responding to stimuli. So unless they respond to every episode of violence — say, Dylann Roof's murders, or the Christchurch massacre — with similar extreme proposals, it's safe to assume that they are atrocity opportunists.

The left's atrocity detectors are tuned to a different channel. They are activated by Israeli wrongdoing (which is real) but quiescent in the face of anti-Israel massacres such as Oct. 7 or the antisemitic attacks that have erupted worldwide in the years since. It wasn't hard to imagine — and many of us warned — that some people who heard and chanted "Globalize the Intifada" had in mind what was done at that Australian beach.

Some on the left object that Jews are using the claim of antisemitism to attempt to silence criticism of Israel. But please tell me what Alex Kleytman, the 87-year-old Holocaust survivor who died shielding his wife, Larisa, from bullets on Bondi Beach had to do with criticism of Israel? What did 10-year-old Matilda (surname withheld at family's request) have to do with events in Gaza?

Perhaps some overwrought Israel defenders do overuse accusations of antisemitism, but it's also true that antisemites use any perceived crime or error by Israel as permission for open season on Jews worldwide. Which is worse?

The murderers in Australia were Muslims who had been radicalized by ISIS. But the hero of the day, Ahmed al Ahmed, was also a Muslim, a bystander who wrestled the gun away from one of the terrorists and was then shot multiple times by the other. Al Ahmed, who is recovering in the hospital, is a Syrian refugee and father of two girls. His story defies the atrocity mongers who want to exploit this crime to quicken hatred in the world. His shining example is a beacon at a time of year when we celebrate miracles.