An Australian Jewish community group warned police an attack was “likely,” days before two terrorists carried out a mass shooting at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Dec. 14, 2025, an inquiry said on Thursday.
The revelation about the warning ahead of the worst terrorist attack in Australian history immediately raised renewed questions over the lack of adequate security at the Chanukah event, which followed a rash of antisemitic attacks in the country triggered by the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led invasion of southern Israel.
“A terrorist attack against the NSW Jewish Community is likely and there is a high level of antisemitic vilification,” the Community Security Group wrote in an email released by the inquiry sent less than a week before the Bondi attack.
Australian Police had said they could not provide dedicated officers, but would send mobile patrols to “check in and monitor the event.”
The inquiry said police should consider increasing security at Jewish events.
“The findings confirm what our community has been saying for some time—that antisemitism in Australia has escalated significantly in both frequency and severity, and that Jewish Australians have increasingly been targeted not just with words, but with violence,” the New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies said in a statement.
Fifteen people, including a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor, were killed by father-and son gunmen in the shooting at Bondi Beach on the first night of Chanukah.
About 110,000 Jews live in Australia, primarily in Melbourne and Sydney.
