Jewish group warned police days before Bondi Beach massacre, inquiry reveals

An Australian Jewish group warned local police of a “likely” terrorist attack just days before the Bondi Beach massacre, a royal inquiry revealed on Thursday.

“A terrorist attack against the NSW Jewish community is likely and there is a high level of antisemitic vilification,” the Jewish Community Security Group warned in an email to police that was released by the inquiry.

Two Islamist terrorists murdered 15 Jews at a Hanukkah event on Sydney’s iconic Bondi Beach in December 2025, the deadliest terrorist attack in Australia in three decades. The inquiry found that police downplayed the warning and did not dispatch officers to protect attendees at the event. Instead, they opted for less resource-intensive mobile patrol “check-ins.”

The royal commission concluded in its interim report that the local Jewish community “was the evident target of the attack.” It called on police to boost security at Jewish events “that have a public-facing element,” including major holidays such as Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, which tend to draw larger crowds.

“The review has revealed areas in which counterterrorism capability at federal and state levels could be improved,” the report stated.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese said it was up to the New South Wales state government to determine whether police had failed in their duty to protect attendees at the Bondi Beach event.

“This is as the government envisaged — that the first task of the royal commission, the priority, was to look at the security elements of these issues,” Albanese said. Looking ahead, he added that his government would “implement all the recommendations” of the report.

“I can assure the Australian public that the government will do everything necessary to protect the community in the wake of the Bondi attack,” Albanese said, without elaborating.

Multicultural Australia was, until recently, widely viewed as a safe country for its Jewish community, which numbers around 100,000 people. However, the country has seen a sharp rise in antisemitism since the Hamas attack on Oct. 7, 2023.

In December 2025, victims of the Bondi Beach massacre urged Albanese’s government in an open letter to “immediately establish a Commonwealth Royal Commission into the rapid rise of antisemitism in Australia.”

“We demand answers and solutions,” the families wrote. Many Jewish Australians have grown increasingly critical of the government’s inability to protect them from antisemitic attacks.

In November 2025, the president of the Zionist Federation of Australia, Jeremy Leibler, said current levels of antisemitism far exceed those seen in the past. He argued that the growing demonization of Israel has affected the Australian Jewish community due to its strong identification with the country and with Zionism.

“While we didn’t feel it [antisemitism], it was there, because [of] the speed at which those who harbored these feelings were then given permission to allow them to be ventilated and articulated, because of these false accusations of genocide thrown at Israel and Zionists – and we are a very Zionist community. It didn’t take much for the memory of the Holocaust, which perhaps kept that antisemitism under the table, to be superseded. And once it’s out of the bag, it’s very difficult to put back in,” Leibler warned.

In February, Israeli President Isaac Herzog visited Australia to show solidarity with the Jewish community and to strengthen ties between the two countries. His visit was met with vocal anti-Israel protests and death threats.

Herzog said there was “frightening and worrying” antisemitism in Australia, “but there’s also a silent majority of Australians who seek peace, who respect the Jewish community, and of course want a dialogue with Israel.”