About 700 people gathered at Bondi Pavilion for a vigil marking the third anniversary of the October 7 attacks, where speakers drew a direct connection between the massacre in Israel and the killing of 15 people at a Jewish festival in Bondi in December.
The ceremony began at 6.29am on Tuesday with the sounding of a shofar, a ceremonial ram’s horn trumpet. It was held only metres from the site of the Bondi terrorist attack.
Israel’s ambassador to Australia, Hillel Newman, said the two events were linked by rising hatred of Jews.
“There is a direct line between the shooting at Nova and the shooting at Bondi,” Mr Newman said. “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.”
New South Wales Opposition Leader Kellie Sloane and federal Liberal senator Dave Sharma also addressed the commemoration, which was held on the anniversary of the Hamas-led attack in which more than 1,200 people were killed and more than 250 taken hostage.
Ms Sloane described images from October 7 as “brutality at its worst” and said the events should not be denied. She also criticised people who chose the anniversary to protest Israel’s military action in Gaza.
“On this day, can I just say ‘shame on you’ to the people that have held protests,” she said.
Pro-Palestinian vigils were due to take place in Sydney’s central business district and Wollongong.
Mr Sharma called the October 7 attack “an organised and systematic massacre of Jews … a pogrom” and said it had helped create the conditions for the Bondi shooting.
“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,” he said.
Among those speaking was 11-year-old Ben Carasso, the grandson of a Holocaust survivor. He became a child influencer after the father of a friend went missing from the Nova festival and was later found to have been killed.
Mr Carasso, who lives in Tel Aviv, said Jewish and Israeli children had been denied a normal childhood since October 7.
“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,” he said.
He added: “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.”
The Executive Council of Australian Jewry said the aftermath of October 7 had exposed antisemitism among religious extremists, the far Left and neo-Nazis. Alex Ryvchin, the organisation’s representative, also criticised what he described as the justification of rape and murder as resistance.
But the Progressive Jewish Council of Australia used the anniversary to call for sanctions against Israel. Its executive director, Sarah Schwartz, said Jewish identity should not be used to silence advocacy for Palestinian rights.
“Every life lost is a whole universe, both Palestinian and Israeli,” Ms Schwartz said.
Israel’s subsequent attacks on Gaza have been estimated in the source material to have killed more than 70,000 people. A further commemoration was due to take place at an undisclosed location in Sydney’s eastern suburbs on Tuesday evening.
