Australian PM Albanese pledges new anti-hate laws after Bondi Beach terror attack

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese vowed on Thursday to implement new laws against hatred following the recent massacre of 15 Jews during a Hanukkah celebration at Sydney’s Bondi Beach. Dozens of people were injured in the terror attack, which was carried out by a father and son, Sajid and Naveed Akram.

“Australians are shocked and angry. I am angry. It is clear we need to do more to combat this evil scourge,” Albanese told media representatives. The Australian prime minister pledged that his government would banish the “evil of antisemitism from our society.”

Australian authorities have already linked the two perpetrators to “Islamic State ideology.”

Minister of Home Affairs Tony Burke said the government seeks to focus its efforts on extremist organizations that spread hatred and division within Australia’s multicultural society.

“There have been organizations which any Australian would look at and say their behavior, their philosophy and what they are trying to do is about division and has no place in Australia,” Burke said. He acknowledged that the hatred has been allowed to spread unchecked for years.

“And yet for a generation, no government has been able to successfully take action against them because they have fallen just below the legal threshold.”

Australia, once known as a peaceful and tolerant society, has recorded a whopping 700% increase in antisemitic incidents since the Hamas Oct. 7, 2023, massacre in southern Israel.

The incidents have mostly been concentrated in Sydney and Melbourne, where the majority of Australia’s 120,000 Jews reside. Many critics in Australia and abroad have condemned Albanese and his government for not sufficiently fighting the rise of antisemitism.

“I, of course, acknowledge that more could have been done and I accept my responsibility for the part in that as prime minister of Australia,” Albanese said on Thursday. “But what I also do is accept my responsibility to lead the nation and unite the nation,” he added.

Some local and international critics believe that Albanese’s new pledge is too little and possibly too late. On Wednesday, former Australian Treasurer Josh Frydenberg argued that the Australian leader should take “personal responsibility” for the antisemitic attack at Bondi Beach and accused Albanese of “abandoning” Jewish Australians.

“I’m here to mourn, but I am also here to warn,” Frydenberg said during a memorial event at the Bondi Pavilion.

“Unless our governments, federal and state, take urgent, unprecedented and strong action, as night follows day we will be back grieving the loss of innocent life in another terrorist attack in our country,” he warned.

“This was all too predictable,” he continued, “And for 2.5 years, as the Australian Jewish community and others have raised the alarm bells, they were told by people who should know better that this was not as significant as they had said.”

“We, as a Jewish community, have been abandoned and left alone by our government,” Frydenberg added, stressing that Albanese “allowed Australia to be radicalized on his watch.”

“It is time for him to accept personal responsibility for the death of 15 innocent people, including a 10-year-old child. This is a time for accountability and action.”

Top Israeli officials, including Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, have also criticized the Australian government’s decision to unilaterally recognize a “Palestinian state,” arguing that such a move rewards Islamist extremism.

IDF Chief of Staff Lt.-Gen. Eyal Zamir warned on Wednesday that the antisemitic wave worldwide is directed “against the entire Jewish people.”

“This evening, as we light the [Hanukkah] candles, our hearts also beat for our brothers and sisters in the Diaspora – and in particular for the Jewish community in Sydney,” Zamir said.

“We mourn the murdered, strengthen and wish a speedy recovery to the wounded. The antisemitic terrorist attack there reminds us: the campaign that began on October 7 is against the entire Jewish people,” the IDF chief warned.