U.S. President Donald Trump’s special envoy on antisemitism says Washington is closely watching Australia’s royal commission into the Bondi Beach terrorist attack amid concern over Prime Minister Anthony Albanese’s past pro‑Palestinian activism and his government’s handling of antisemitism.
Rabbi Yehuda Kaploun told The Australian on Friday that Trump and Secretary of State Marco Rubio want “full transparency” from the inquiry and are monitoring how Canberra responds before drawing conclusions.
Kaploun said the Albanese government had shown “apathy” toward Jewish concerns and “turned a blind eye” to antisemitism in the years leading up to the attack, delaying a royal commission until after the tragedy, and suggested that Albanese’s activist history and attendance at pro‑Palestinian protests may have contributed to Canberra’s lack of action in addressing antisemitism ahead of what is widely described as the worst terrorist attack in Australian history.
“It doesn’t lend itself to him being a fair and impartial person … , which is crucial to finding out what occurred,” Kaploun said.
Sky News Australia reported on Dec. 30 that newly highlighted footage from 2000 shows Albanese, then a federal Labor MP, addressing a pro‑Palestinian rally in Sydney where flags of designated terrorist groups Hamas and Hezbollah were flown, and children wore mock suicide vests.
Kaploun criticized Albanese for letting a report by Jillian Segal, Australia’s special envoy to combat antisemitism, sit on his desk for six months, saying there was “no reason” its recommendations were not implemented earlier and that it should not have taken a massacre to spur action.
Albanese announced on Dec. 18 that the government would fully support and adopt all 13 recommendations from Segal’s July “Plan to Combat Antisemitism” in the wake of the terrorist shooting attack at a Dec. 14 Chabad Chanukah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach that left 15 dead and 39 wounded.
The 62-year-old Labor Party leader, who succeeded Scott Morrison of the Liberal Party as the country’s 31st prime minister in 2022, said on Thursday that a royal commission will investigate the Bondi Beach attack, to be led by former High Court Justice Virginia Bell.
These moves, which were welcomed by the Australian Jewish community’s official representative body, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry (ECAJ), came amid mounting pressure as officials and critics had demanded a high‑powered federal inquiry into the attack.
“It is imperative that this commission operate with full transparency, and that those who shoulder the blame for these horrific events be held accountable,” Kaploun said.
The envoy, an Israeli‑American Chabad rabbi whose appointment was confirmed by the U.S. Senate in the days after the Bondi Beach attack, said Trump was “shocked and saddened” by the loss of life and fully briefed on the attack, calling the inquiry a chance to identify security failures and hold officials accountable so a similar incident “doesn’t happen again.”
He also praised Bondi Beach hero Syrian‑born Australian fruit-shop owner Ahmed al‑Ahmed for his “unifying” actions during the attack, in which he tackled one of the gunmen, and noted his own personal connection to Australia through his Australian‑born father and the images of Jewish couple Sofia and Boris Gurman, who were killed while trying to stop the gunman.
Australian authorities say a father‑and‑son pair, inspired by Islamic State ideology, opened fire on the crowd gathered for a celebration of the Jewish holiday, killing and wounding dozens in a premeditated, antisemitic terrorist attack.
