Tag: australia

Australian PM vows hate speech crackdown after Bondi Beach attack

PM Albanese announces strict measures against hate, extremism, and antisemitism after mass shooting at Bondi Beach Jewish festival

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese promised a sweeping crackdown on hate, division and radicalisation on Thursday after a mass shooting killed 15 people at a Jewish festival on Bondi Beach.

“Australians are shocked and angry. I am angry. It is clear we need to do more to combat this evil scourge, much more,” Albanese told a news conference.

The prime minister outlined a suite of measures to target extremist preachers, impose stiffer punishments, and refuse or cancel visas for people who spread “hate and division”.

As he spoke, mourners gathered for the funeral of a 10-year-old girl among those gunned down while celebrating Hanukkah on Sunday at Sydney’s iconic beach.

Critics in the Jewish Australian community and beyond have assailed the prime minister for not doing more to protect them from rising antisemitism.

New “aggravated hate speech” laws will punish preachers and leaders stoking hatred and violence, Albanese said.

He vowed harsher penalties, too.

Australia would develop a regime for listing organisations with leaders who engage in hate speech, he said.

“Serious vilification” based on race or advocating racial supremacy is to become a federal offence.

The government will also boost the home affairs minister’s powers to cancel or reject visas for people who spread “hate and division”, he said.

Albanese said a task force is being set up with a 12-month mission to ensure the education system “properly responds” to antisemitism.

“Every Jewish Australian has the right to be proud of who they are and what they believe,” he said.

“And every Jewish Australian has the right to feel safe, valued and respected for the contribution that they make to our great nation.”

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Bondi Beach Shows Why Self-Defense Is a Vital Right

At Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, a father-son team of ISIS-inspired terrorists murdered attendees at a celebration of the first day of Hanukkah. One of the attackers was disarmed by a heroic civilian who was shot in the process, while others lost their lives trying to help.

Contrasting Responses to Threats

Australia’s Prime Minister Anthony Albanese responded to the shooting with promises to further tighten gun laws in the already restrictive country—a measure more likely to disarm potential victims than to inconvenience those planning a homicidal attack. In the U.S., by contrast, Jews stepped up security by themselves and alongside police. At the request of my wife’s rabbi, I recruited a friend who served as a Force Recon Marine. We strapped on armor and pistols to patrol the crowd at the menorah lighting in Sedona, Arizona. Members of the congregation carried concealed weapons of their own.

Nothing happened, but we were there to deter problems and respond if necessary. There’s a big difference between doubling down on failed state policies and taking responsibility for your own safety.

According to Prime Minister Albanese’s office, after the attack, “leaders agreed that strong, decisive and focused action was needed on gun law reform as an immediate action” and promised “to strengthen gun laws” with further restrictions. Of course, that’s what Australia did in 1996 after the Port Arthur mass shooting. The government banned a variety of firearms, with compensation for their surrender. Compliance was limited and the effort spawned a significant black market for guns.

But Australia’s millions of guns didn’t kill 15 people at Bondi Beach. Two men with known Islamist ties who traveled last month to the Philippines for training at terrorist summer camp committed the murders. They chose guns as their tools, but they could just as easily have used explosives, vehicles, incendiaries, or something else to cause mayhem.

“The issue is not gun laws. It’s hatred of Jews,” Rabbi Daniel Greyber of Durham, North Carolina commented after the Bondi Beach attack.

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There’s No Evidence Australia’s Strict Gun Control Laws Are Effective

emocrats in the United States repeatedly praise Australia’s 1996 gun confiscation law as a successful model to emulate, while many Australians — especially after the Bondi Beach terror attack earlier this week — argue that the confiscation helped but failed to go far enough. Yet the supposed benefits of this policy rest on deeply flawed statistical analysis.

After the Minneapolis school shooting in September, Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz claimed, “When they had a school shooting in Scotland or they had an incident in Australia, they simply made changes. … And since they did those things, they don’t have them. We’re an outlier amongst nations in terms of what happens to our children.” Prominent Democrats, including Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Joe Biden, have echoed this praise for Australia’s 1996 gun confiscation law.

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese reinforced this narrative on Monday after the massacre, stating that a prior administration’s gun laws “have made an enormous difference in Australia and are a proud moment of reform, quite rightly, achieved across the parliament with bipartisan support.” Supporters typically point to declines in firearm homicides and firearm suicides as evidence of success.

Relying on that perceived success, Albanese has promised even stricter gun control, arguing that tighter laws would yield even greater benefits. Policymakers already advocate proposals such as limits on the number of firearms individuals may own and periodic license reviews.

For years, major media outlets — including USA Today, The New York Times, and The Washington Post — have published stories crediting Australia’s 1996–1997 gun confiscation with cutting firearm homicide and suicide rates in half and eliminating mass public shootings.

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Pundits Blame Sydney Slaughter on Protest Slogan

Australian officials are still learning about the individuals who carried out the Bondi Beach attack, killing more than a dozen Jews celebrating Hanukkah in Sydney. But the pundits, with their magnifying glasses and meerschaum pipes, have cracked the case. The culprit is: pro-Palestine protesters.

“When people chant ‘intifada revolution,’ they are revealing something important about their goals and methods,” wrote noted Iraq War enthusiast David Frum (Atlantic, 12/14/25). “Yet in many Western countries, public authorities have been reluctant—or unwilling—to hear the message.” Frum went on:

It is helpful to possess a lexicon of what is typically intended by these vocabularies. Armed struggle means shooting people or blowing them up with bombs. By any means necessary means targeting the most defenseless: children, the elderly, other civilians. Globalize the intifada means shooting or bombing people in Sydney, London, Paris, Toronto, Los Angeles and New York City, as well as in Tel Aviv or Jerusalem. From the river to the sea means the annihilation of a sovereign democratic state and the mass murder, expulsion and enslavement of much of its population.

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Bondi Beach hero helped disarm terrorist before police mistakenly shot him: report

A man who rushed in to help disarm one of the terrorists who fired at a crowd celebrating Hanukkah in Australia’s famous Bondi Beach was mistakenly shot by police and tackled by bystanders, according to a new report.

The heroic civilian, who was only described as a Middle Eastern refugee living with his Australian wife and kids, was in Bondi Beach when Naveed Akram, 24, and his father Sajid, 50, allegedly opened fire at a crowd of Jewish revelers.

At least 15 people were killed in the attack and dozens others injured.

Harrowing video shows the moment the good Samaritan runs up the bridge where the gunmen were firing from after one of them was hit by police returning fire, the Daily Mail reported.

The man quickly sneaks up on the downed shooter and begins kicking his rifle out of reach before the gunman can grab it.

The quick-thinking civilian then begins to raise his hands and back away from the scene, but gunfire continues to ring out as he shouts, “Don’t shoot.”

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Australia Police Refuse to Comment on Motive of Hanukkah Terror Attack, Father and Son Identified as Suspects

Australian police said that they will not be commenting yet on the motive behind the terror attack allegedly committed by a father and son duo.

According to New South Wales Police, the death toll of the terrorist attack on a Hanukkah event at Sydney’s Bondi Beach on Sunday has risen to 16. A total of 42 people were hospitalised or received care elsewhere, two of whom have since died. Included among the dead are a 10-year-old girl and an 87-year-old, the Sydney Morning Herald reported.

Five people remain in critical condition, and four police officers are in serious condition after sustaining gunshot wounds.

NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon disclosed that the two suspected shooters were a 50-year-old man and his 24-year-old son, Naveed Akram, who is said to be in police custody after being critically injured.  The father was killed at the scene.

Police have so far refused to disclose any information about their ethnicity or nationality. Lanyon also said that police will not be disclosing any information as to the motive for the attack for now.

“We’re still very early in the investigation, we’re happy to provide information,” Lanyon said. “I want to give our investigators the opportunity to investigate thoroughly without speculation. We heard a lot information was coming forward. I want to make sure it’s accurate… our investigation will be thorough.”

The police chief did disclose that the 50-year-old man had a license for a firearm for approximately 10 years despite Australia’s strict gun control laws. Lanyon also said that police were aware of the 24-year-old suspected shooter, but did not have any indication that he was planning an attack.

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Australian Prime Minister Albanese Proposes Tougher National Gun Laws After Mass Shooting in Sydney

Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese on Monday proposed tougher national gun laws after a mass shooting targeted a Hanukkah celebration on Sydney’s Bondi Beach, leaving at least 15 people dead.

Albanese said he would propose new restrictions, including limiting the number of guns a licensed owner can obtain. His proposals were announced after the authorities revealed that the older of the two gunmen—who were a father and son—had held a gun license for a decade and amassed his six guns legally.

“The government is prepared to take whatever action is necessary. Included in that is the need for tougher gun laws,” Albanese told reporters.

“People’s circumstances can change. People can be radicalized over a period of time. Licenses should not be in perpetuity,” he added.

At least 38 people were being treated in hospitals after the massacre on Sunday, when the two shooters fired indiscriminately on the beachfront festivities. Those killed included a 10-year-old girl, a rabbi and a Holocaust survivor.

The horror at Australia’s most popular beach was the deadliest shooting in almost three decades in a country with strict gun control laws primarily aimed at removing rapid-fire rifles from circulation. Albanese called the massacre an act of anti-Semitic terrorism that struck at the heart of the nation.

He pledged swift change, planning on Monday afternoon to present his gun law proposals to a national cabinet meeting that includes state leaders. Some of the measures would also require state legislation.

“Some laws are commonwealth and some laws are implemented by the states,” the Australian leader said. “What we want to do is to make sure that we’re all completely on the same page.”

Christopher Minns, premier of New South Wales where Sydney is the state capital, agreed with Albanese that gun licenses should not be granted in perpetuity.

Minns said his state’s gun laws would change, but he could not yet detail how.

“It means introducing a bill to Parliament to—I mean to be really blunt—make it more difficult to get these horrifying weapons that have no practical use in our community,” Minns told repoters.

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Iran’s Response to Australia’s Bondi Beach Terror Attack Raises Questions

The mass-casualty terror attack targeting a Hanukkah gathering at Sydney’s Bondi Beach was the predictable outcome of a global environment in which antisemitic incitement is normalized, rationalized, and, in some cases, actively encouraged by state actors.

In the hours following the attack, attention has turned to Iran—not because Tehran immediately claimed responsibility, but because of how Iranian officials, state media, and regime-aligned commentators have responded.

Iran’s reaction follows a familiar pattern. There has been no direct praise for the murders.

Instead, Iranian outlets have worked to reframe the attack as an understandable—or even defensible—reaction to the Israel-Hamas war, while redirecting outrage toward Israel and the West.

This strategy allows the regime to distance itself from operational responsibility while sustaining the ideological climate that fuels antisemitic violence worldwide.

Iranian state media coverage was notably clinical on the surface. The Islamic Republic News Agency (IRNA), Tehran’s official media, reported the basic facts: a shooting at a Jewish Hanukkah celebration, multiple fatalities, and ongoing investigations by Australian authorities.

Missing, however, was any moral condemnation of the attack or recognition of antisemitism as a motivating factor. Instead, IRNA quickly pivoted, characterizing Israeli reactions as “harsh” and “unprecedented” and situating the massacre within the broader narrative of Gaza.

Iranian coverage repeatedly emphasized claims about civilian deaths in Gaza, citing figures from Hamas-run authorities and presenting them as uncontested fact.

The implication was clear: violence against Jews abroad should be understood through the lens of Israel’s military actions, rather than as terrorism targeting a religious minority.

By embedding the Bondi Beach attack within a Gaza-focused narrative, Iranian media effectively shifted blame from the perpetrators to Jewish collective identity itself.

That narrative was taken further by regime-aligned commentators. Lebanese journalist Hadi Hoteit, who identifies himself as a correspondent for Iran’s state-run Press TV, posted on social media questioning whether the attacker should even be labeled a terrorist.

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Father and son terrorists were armed to the teeth with SIX guns when they launched their deadly Bondi Beach rampage, killing 15 and injuring dozens more – as police reveal they were ALL legally-owned

The father and son terrorists who opened fire onto a crowd of innocent people, killing 15 at Bondi Beach had six guns with them at the scene, police have said.

The older gunman Sajid Akram, 50, was shot dead by police while his son Naveed Akram, 24, suffered critical injuries and remains in hospital under police guard following the horrific shooting at a Jewish Hannukkah celebration on Sunday night.

NSW Police Commissioner Mal Lanyon confirmed the 50-year-old, who is yet to be formally identified, held a gun licence and all firearms registered to him were legally owned. 

Police have since seized all six firearms linked to him which are understood to have been at the scene of the terrifying shooting.

‘He has six firearms licensed to him. We are satisfied that we have six firearms from the scene yesterday, but also as a result of the search warrant at the Campsie address,’ Mr Lanyon said.

‘Ballistics and forensic investigation will determine those six firearms are the six that were licensed to that man, but also they were used in the offence yesterday at Bondi.

‘We will continue to investigate this matter thoroughly.’ 

ASIO has also admitted that one of the shooters was on their radar.

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Let’s talk about…the Bondi Beach attack

Earlier today, two gunmen allegedly opened fire on attendees of a Chanukah by the Sea event on Bondi Beach in Sydney.

So far, authorities have claimed 12 people are dead, eleven civilians and one gunman, with a further twenty nine in hospital, includ8ng the second alleged gunman.

One suspect has been named as Naveed Akram, a 24 year old living in Sydney. Authorities also claim to have discovered an “explosive device” in a car “linked to” the attacker.

It’s only been a few hours, but the Independent has a personal opinion piece headlined:

Bondi was my safe haven – after today, Australia will never be the same

This is a common sentiment. Surprisingly common.

That feels like narrative talking point to me. But, assuming this is psy-op on some level, what might the final aim be?

It can’t be guns, because Australia’s guns are long gone.

If it’s about anti-Muslim sentiment, it’s a finely modulated game since one of the heroes of the hour is also a Muslim immigrant.

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