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A heavy silence fell across Australia on Sunday evening as thousands lit candles to honour the victims of the Bondi Beach Hanukkah shooting, marking exactly one week since the nation’s deadliest mass shooting in nearly three decades.
At 6:47 pm, the precise moment gunfire first erupted during the beachside festival, the country observed a minute of silence. From the sails of the Sydney Opera House to remote outback towns, flags flew at half-mast to remember a group of victims that included children and Holocaust survivors.
“We are here together,” Roslyn Fishall, a member of the local Jewish community, told reporters at a makeshift memorial. “Turn to strangers and hug them. Let’s make peace together,” she added.
The tragedy has shattered Australia’s long-standing sense of security regarding gun violence. The alleged attackers, Sajid Akram, 50, and his son Naveed, 24, are accused of an “Isis-inspired” antisemitic terror attack. While the elder Akram was killed by police, Naveed remains under guard in a hospital, facing 15 counts of murder.
Also read | The story of Amandeep Singh Bola, an Indian-origin man who helped restrain Bondi Beach terrorist
The week has been defined by profound grief, with by the funeral of 10-year-old Matilda, the youngest victim. “The loss is unspeakable,” Rabbi Levi Wolff told AFP, as families moved between consecutive burials.
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View AllHowever, the aftermath is also fraught with social tension. Reports of pig heads left at Muslim graves and a surge in far-right rallies have raised fears for Australia’s social cohesion.
In response, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese has announced a sweeping national gun buyback scheme, the largest since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre.
Top-to-bottom overhaul
Additionally, PM Albanese has also launched a comprehensive federal review into Australia’s police and intelligence frameworks.
The motive of the probe is to determine if the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (Asio) and federal police possess the necessary “powers and structures” to combat a rapidly evolving domestic threat.
Investigations have revealed that Naveed was scrutinised by Asio for radicalisation in 2019 but was deemed a non-threat. Despite this history, his father successfully maintained a license for six firearms.
“The Isis-inspired atrocity last Sunday reinforces the rapidly changing security environment in our nation,” PM Albanese stated. “We need to examine exactly the way that systems work. We need to look back at what happened in 2019 when this person was looked at, and the assessment that was made,” he added.
Detectives are currently tracing a recent four-week trip the pair took to the southern Philippines. While regional authorities in Mindanao deny the area is a training ground for extremists, hotel staff reported the duo remained “holed up” in their room for nearly a month.
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