‘Direct line between October 7 and Bondi’: Vigils remember Jewish massacre

The coarse wail of the shofar – a ceremonial ram’s horn trumpet – echoed across the Bondi Pavilion courtyard at 6.29am on Wednesday as about 700 people gathered to mark the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks on Israel.

NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane, federal Liberal senator Dave Sharma and Israel’s ambassador to Australia Hillel Newman spoke at the event, metres away from the site of December’s Bondi terrorist attack.

They all drew a link between the events of October 7, 2023, when thousands of militants crossed from Gaza to assault Israel, killing more than 1200 and taking 250 people captive, and the Bondi attack, in which 15 people were killed by gunmen at a Jewish festival.

“There is a direct line between the shooting at Nova and the shooting at Bondi,” said Newman.

“We have witnessed verbal violence and bullying which led to vandalism, arson and culminated in the murder of 15 people right here … It is not the actions of Israel, it is the hatred of Jews.”

Among the speakers was 11-year-old Ben Carasso, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor who became a child influencer on social media after the father of his friend went missing from the Nova festival in Israel and was later found to have been killed.

“I’m very glad we began the connection in Bondi with the Israel children and the Jewish children, they’ve both suffered since October 7,” said Carasso, who lives in Tel Aviv but has travelled widely among the global Jewish diaspora.

“We don’t have a normal childhood for three years now. I want to get to speak for the children. We didn’t get a chance to grow up.

“Since October 7, I saw what the children of Israel were going through. My friend lost his father. They didn’t know where he was for months, he was at the Nova festival.

“Israeli children are forced to learn what to do in a rocket attack. It’s a side that is not talked about. For three years we have had this, and I want the world to know.”

Sloane told those at the vigil that vision of the October 7 attacks had moved her deeply.

“Little boys running from a shelter after their father was attacked, a woman on the back of a ute, kids slaughtered. It was brutality at its worst,” she said.

“What was done to them deserved to be seen, and it can never be denied.”

Sloane said people who chose today to protest Israel’s action in Gaza should be ashamed of themselves.

“On this day, can I just say ‘shame on you’ to the people that have held protests.”

Pro-Palestine vigils were due to take place in the Sydney CBD and Wollongong on Wednesday.

Sharma called the Hamas attacks on October 7 “an organised and systematic massacre of Jews … a pogrom”, and said it had created the conditions for the Bondi attack.

“It was the terrible tragic result of a culture that took root in Australia after the Hamas terror attack and the war that followed,” Sharma said.

“This was a culture where vilification was permitted to go unchecked, where antisemitism was excused, or tolerated, or met with moral equivocation and where Australian leaders went missing in action and lost their moral compass.”

While the Jewish community in Australia is united in grief by the October 7 atrocities, there are diverse views on the way forward.

Alex Ryvchin of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry said the event had exposed antisemitism in sections of the community.

“We saw it in Lakemba and the Opera House,” he said. “We saw it among religious fanatics, the far-left and the resurgent neo-Nazis. It made everything clear at once. It exposed the rank hypocrisy of human-rights advocates who lined up to explain why rape and murder were resistance in certain cases.”

The progressive Jewish Council of Australia used the date to call for sanctions against Israel.

“Every life lost is a whole universe, both Palestinian and Israeli,” said the group’s executive director Sarah Schwartz. “But as Jews, we refuse to allow our identities to be weaponised to enable further killing and the silencing of advocacy for Palestinian rights.”

There was a huge police presence at the Central Synagogue in Sydney’s east on Wednesday night, where about 2000 people gathered at a second event to commemorate the lives lost on October 7.

Israel responded with attacks on Gaza that are estimated to have killed over 70,000 people.

Several high-profile parliamentarians joined the nighttime vigil, including Opposition Leader Angus Taylor, Jewish Liberal MP Julian Leeser, and opposition spokesman for foreign affairs Ted O’Brien. Former prime minister Tony Abbott was also present.

NSW Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane and NSW Minister for Multiculturalism Steve Kamper both spoke at the commemoration.

Despite reminders to refrain from applause during the memorial, Sloane was applauded twice: once at the end of her address and again after she was commended by former AFL player Gerard Healy during his speech later in the evening.

“I just wish other politicians would speak with such clarity and authority on antisemitism as Kellie has done,” Healy said.

In his address, Kamper said that the “passage of time does not lessen the significance of that day… for the families who lost loved ones, for those who have survived.”

He paid homage to Galit Carbone, the 66-year-old Sydneysider and grandmother killed on October 7, and said the Bondi terror attack in December “brought painfully to light the dangers of antisemitism”.

Ben Carasso, who addressed Wednesday’s dawn service, spoke again at the evening vigil. He was joined onstage by Matilda Bee’s younger sister, six-year-old Summer. Matilda was killed during last year’s terror attack at Bondi.

A small gathering turned up at Town Hall on Wednesday evening for the planned pro-Palestinian vigil. They were almost outnumbered by the contingent of police and TV crews who kept a watchful eye over the proceedings.

Palestine Action Group spokesperson Josh Lees was in attendance, but no state MPs joined the protest.