Media release: Bondi Terror Attack on Jewish Community

The Holocaust and Antisemitism Foundation, Aotearoa New Zealand expresses its deep grief over the 14 December attack on the Jewish Community in Bondi Beach, Sydney, Australia.

Antisemitism has risen at an alarming rate worldwide since October 7, 2023. Australia experienced a fourfold increase in antisemitic acts in the year following. New Zealand has not been immune to the global trend.

A key driver has been the free pass given to libel-driven antizionist rhetoric in our media, social media and even in the discourse of some of our politicians, community and church leaders. Ideas have consequences and false ideas about Jews and the Jewish state can lubricate the path to atrocities of the kind that transpired on the beach in Bondi. In an age of false narratives, few are impacted more significantly than the Jewish people.

Our Holocaust Foundation is dedicated to the faithful presentation and commemoration of the events of the Holocaust, and resistance to all attempts to universalize, dilute, or otherwise distort the historical record. Libel and propaganda played a crucial role in the gradual isolation, demonisation and dehumanisation of the Jews of Europe. The lessons for the current period are obvious.

We urge our leaders - and all those with influence - to stand with the Jewish community at this time, and to push back against reckless and irresponsible rhetoric fuelling the rise of antisemitism in our time.