On December 14 , 2025, 16 people were killed, and dozens more injured, in an Islamic terrorist attack against the Jewish community while it peacefully observed a seaside Hanukkah celebration at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia.
This Hanukkah celebration was open to the public and was intended to be a place of peaceful music and prayer, as Rabbis offered blessings, and Holocaust survivors were honored as a symbol of resilience. However, the celebration abruptly ended with a barbaric and deliberate antisemitic attack where two gunmen killed 15 people, with many more injured. The attack will be notoriously remembered as “Australia’s worst mass shooting in nearly three decades.”
Despite Australia’s already strict gun laws, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s solution to this antisemitic massacre vows to strengthen hate speech laws as well as launch a national gun buyback program. Furthermore, Albanese seeks to tighten the reins on gun control laws that would ultimately limit the possession of firearms to four per person in conjunction with strict licensing requirements.
Meanwhile, many leaders from around the world are calling for concrete action to restore safety to Jewish populations everywhere. However, the implementation of the “toughest” gun control law reform is far from concrete action, as it does not address the root cause of what led to the terror attack in the first place. The concrete action needed must directly and adequately address the growing and violently lethal hatred taken out against Jewish people.
If Prime Minister Albanese sought to legitimately denounce antisemitism and restore security to the Jewish community in Sydney, he would speak clearly against it, instead of being distracted by the choice of weapon used to attack them. The statement he put out immediately following the attack did not even mention the words “Jews” or “antisemitism.”
Instead, the Prime Minister has been very vocal about the decision he made earlier this year for Australia to recognize a Palestinian state. His approach has been of little comfort to the families of the Jewish lives lost at Bondi Beach.
Prime Minister Albanese could do more to vet violent jihadists who have infiltrated Australia under the guise of being “non-violent Islamists.” It is time for him and other leaders around the world to recognize the very real threat our Jewish friends face constantly merely because of their culture and religious beliefs.
Even in the United States we are facing a pivotal moment where powerful forces are working to undermine efforts to combat antisemitism in the name of “freedom of speech.” Powerful voices are lining up to shame anyone who dares to stand up for Israel, even at this hour when they have been under attack in such a visible way, following the horrific events of October 7, 2023. Some are going so far as to invest considerable time and effort into revisiting the events of World War II to suggest it has been blown out of proportion, and perhaps Hitler was not really the bad guy.
As Christians, we must stand against such efforts and speak truth, no matter the consequences. Concerned Women for America (CWA) has been fighting for many years to raise awareness of the evil forces at play that have now even infiltrated the conservative movement and seek to divide us, so that we turn our backs on the victims of these horrible terrorist attacks. We will not comply. We will overcome this darkness with the light of Christ.
