By Paul Alexander Wolf

Why this was written

This piece is offered in the belief that grief deserves truth, and that truth spoken with restraint can still hold a society together. It is written in solidarity with those harmed, and in refusal of the idea that hatred is inevitable or justified – here or anywhere.

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There are moments when speech seems too small and silence too heavy, and this is one of them.

What happened at Bondi was not random harm. It was violence directed at a Jewish gathering, an assault that shattered an ordinary moment of celebration and safety. Jewish families were confronted with terror in a place where they should have felt at ease, and a community with a long memory of persecution was reminded, painfully, that fear can still intrude even here.

This is a time for grief.

It is also a time for solidarity.

Jewish Australians are entitled to safety, dignity, and peace in this country without qualification or explanation. That truth stands on its own.

But compassion, if it is to mean anything, must be accompanied by honesty.

This attack was directed at a Jewish event, and it rightly strikes the Jewish community with particular force. Yet the violence did not confine itself to one identity. Others present – neighbours, passers-by, families, first responders – were also killed or injured. Their lives mattered no less. Their loss deserves no less recognition.

To acknowledge this is not to dilute the reality of antisemitism. It is to tell the truth about what violence does. It rarely limits its harm to those it claims to target.

We must also speak plainly about what this violence is not.

Religious intolerance and ideologically driven violence have no place in Australia. Not when directed at Jews. Not when directed at Muslims. Not when directed at Christians. Not when directed at anyone. When belief is turned into a justification for harm, it betrays the very values it claims to defend. When overseas conflicts are imported into our streets, they fracture the civic trust on which a plural society depends.

Australia cannot allow hatred from elsewhere to take root here, whatever its origin and whatever its cause.

In the days since the attack, comments from overseas leaders have suggested that Australia’s domestic political choices, or its prime minister, somehow contributed to this violence. That claim is neither fair nor helpful. Foreign policy positions can be debated, criticised, and contested. They do not create responsibility for criminal acts committed on Australian soil, and they must never be used to imply collective blame or moral causation.

No Australian should ever be held responsible for the actions of a foreign government. And no community should be placed in the crossfire of arguments that do not belong in our civic life.

At the same time, we must resist another false choice.

To mourn with the Jewish community today does not require silence about suffering elsewhere, including in Gaza. And to speak with anguish about Gaza does not justify hostility toward Jewish Australians. These are separate moral domains. Confusing them serves only those who profit from division.

Questions of war, occupation, and allegations of genocide are matters for political leadership, international law, and moral scrutiny at the highest levels. They are not licences for hatred in Australian streets, nor burdens to be placed on civilians who had no hand in those decisions.

A serious nation is capable of holding more than one truth at a time. It can condemn antisemitism without hesitation. It can protect Jewish communities without reserve. And it can still insist that all human life has value, and that suffering, wherever it occurs, deserves moral concern.

There was also courage at Bondi, and it deserves to be named.

Amid fear and chaos, one man intervened and disarmed the attacker. He was a Muslim. He did not act as a representative of a cause or a creed, but as a human being who refused to stand by while others were in danger. His action almost certainly saved lives.

That fact matters. Not as symbolism, but as truth. In a single moment, it exposed the lie at the heart of religious hatred – the lie that faith communities are destined to stand opposed. It showed, without rhetoric or argument, that conscience is stronger than identity, and that courage is not owned by any one religion.

This does not erase the grief. Nothing can.

But it reminds us who we still are.

This moment asks something of leadership – steadiness rather than slogans. It asks institutions to protect those at risk, media to inform without inflaming, and citizens to refuse intimidation, silence, and hatred in any form.

Above all, it asks us to remember why a diverse society exists at all. Not to erase difference, but to ensure difference does not become danger. Not to demand agreement, but to guarantee safety. Not to replace conscience with noise, but to strengthen it through restraint.

That is the work of this moment.

And it belongs to all of us.