Law Enforcement in Sydney and Toronto: Are Jews Protected?
No one can be surprised by the Bondi Beach murder spree. So far, Toronto's Jews have just been lucky.
One week ago, we had a holiday note all teed up and ready to go. That morning, shortly after my coffee, news of the Bondi Beach Massacre broke in Israel.
Just as on October 7, 2023, everything changed on Sunday, December 14, 2025.
Our lives were overtaken by this tragedy.
I was particularly focused on the many alarming parallels between the environment for Jewish people in Sydney and my hometown, Toronto. The main difference between the two cities is that Toronto’s Jewish community is approximately four times the size of Sydney’s. I’ve never been to Australia but am well aware that the federal government there is predisposed to minimizing the strong presence in that country of extremist Muslims. Islamists. Same in Canada. Perhaps even more so.
Dare to voice even the gentlest criticism of this trend, and you are branded “Islamophobic”. Dare to be Jewish - as were the celebrants at Bondi Beach one week ago - and you are a genocidal, Zionist fascist. You are beneath contempt. And, as we saw last week, legitimate concerns that have been raised by Jewish leadership in Sydney regarding the normalization of extreme antisemitism, have been dismissed by political and law enforcement leadership. For more than two years.
No one can be surprised that this pandering to extremists led to the outcome last weekend at Bondi; the savage slaughter of innocents. Because they were Jewish. Because they had the audacity to be happy and proud to be Jewish, in public.
And in the immediate aftermath of the Bondi murders, as we absorbed the magnitude of the betrayal of Australian Jews by the country’s governing institutions, the ugliness just intensified.
Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, a staunch advocate of recognizing Palestinian statehood in the wake of October 7, has repeatedly attributed the Bondi mass murder to right wing extremism and overly permissive gun laws. This emphasis is odd, in light of the fact that the father and son terror team were impelled and motivated by the ideology of ISIS, which they supported.
One month before the attack, Sajid and Naveed Akram had reportedly popped off to the island of Mindanao in the Philippines to spend a few weeks at an ISIS training camp. Australian security and intelligence, it would seem, were either unaware of or unperturbed by this adventure. Albanese acknowledged that they were, indeed, radicalized but seemed to downplay this fact by saying that his government was working as hard as possible to combat antisemitism, adding: “But antisemitism, of course, has been around for a very long period of time — that's the point.”
I’m sorry - Prime Minister - what, exactly, is your point?
Another perspective on Albanese’s policy towards the middle east and Israel is that his strident insistence that recognition of a Palestinian state was in no way a reward for the October 7 slaughter. (That’s how he spins it.) This logic is also apparent in the foreign policies of the United Kingdom and Canada. Prime Ministers Albanese, Carney and Starmer seem not to understand that Hamas is an Islamist terror group ascribing to an extremist ideology that calls for the annihilation of Israel and murder of all Jews. Everywhere. Jews are demonized as being spiritually and biologically evil to the point that their humanity is denied. Islamist political vocabulary tracks very closely to that used by the Nazis one century ago. This hateful rhetoric is then used to indoctrinate and incite extremist Muslims to act on their beliefs, telling them that dying as a martyr - a shaheed - while murdering Jews, is a great honor. The father and son murder team had an ISIS flag in their car.
Back to the bullishness of the three prime ministers on recognizing the State of Palestine. The most charitable explanation for this view is that they are unaware of the popularity of Hamas among Palestinians. Or, perhaps they don’t believe it to be true. They speak vaguely about who will actually govern this State of Palestine that they are in such a hurry to recognize. And they seem unaware of the fact that the majority of Palestinians in the West Bank - living under the rule of Mahmoud Abbas and the Fatah party - overwhelmingly prefer Hamas. In poll after poll.
Hamas - and all Islamists - are fixated on destroying Israel. Globalizing the Intifada means just that. Murdering Jewish civilians going about their lives: suicide bombings on crowded buses; in restaurants; in shopping centers and markets. This violence is noble in Islamist ideology, because it is undertaken to destroy the Zionist entity, aka Israel.
When the demonstrators in Toronto and Sydney and in so many places world wide chant, “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” they are calling for the destruction of Israel. The slogan conjures the replacement of Israel - from the Jordan River to the Mediterranean Sea - with a State of Palestine. In other words, Israel will cease to exist. This is neither new nor insightful. Islamists proclaim this proudly. They even did so while they slaughtered on October 7.
Ignoring reality and the violent, hateful culture that permeates Palestinian society, is clearly not problematic for the troika of prime ministers.
But - to dare to suggest that this is the reality makes one, again, an Islamophobe.
Two days after the Bondi attack, Albanese made a show of visiting Ahmed al-Ahmed in hospital. The 43-year-old green grocer had moved to Australia from Syria. He reportedly had police training. Upon seeing the men shoot, al-Ahmed tackled one of the gunmen and managed to take control of his weapon. He was wounded quite seriously in his shoulder by the second gunman. Al-Ahmed’s heroism and bravery were remarkable.
So was the callousness of Albanese.
It’s wonderful that he paid a hospital visit to al-Ahmed.
It’s also appalling that Albanese did not visit any other victims of the massacre in hospital. Nor did he attend a single funeral for those murdered, not even the service for 10-year-old Matilda Britvan.
Nor did Albanese mention, even once, Sofia and Boris Gurman, a couple in their 60s who saw the gunmen in the parking lot, before they began their spree. The Gurman’s desperately tried to stop the ISIS men. They were the first people known to have intervened to try to prevent this massacre. Heroes. Murdered. And overlooked by Albanese.
These are not gaffes. Or oversights. This conduct reflects how morally hollowed so many western countries and their leadership have become.
Australian Jews are understandably horrified. But, like me, they are not surprised.
We post here the reactions of two Jewish Sydneysiders:
Listen to Victoria Teplitsky, 55, of Sydney, speak of her father - a Holocaust survivor who was badly injured at Bondi Beach and hospitalized - as well as the continued failure of Prime Minister Anthony Albanese to take seriously the very valid security concerns of the Jewish community. Her testimony, so coolly delivered, is heart-stopping.
I suggest watching it all, but if you skip to the final minute you will hear a stinging rebuke of the disingenuousness and betrayal of Australian political leadership.
Next, we bring you these comments from Josh Frydenberg, a former politician who served as Treasurer of the Australian government from 2018-22, posted on “X”:
These Australians, and many others, are not sugar coating anything. Nor should they.
Canada is arguably a more hostile environment for Jews, especially in Toronto and Montreal. Across the country, even in rural areas where there are few if any, Jews, antisemitism is rampant.
I have spoken to many journalists, lawyers, political observers and random acquaintances during the past week, and am asked two questions, repeatedly:
Are you surprised that this happened?
Is Canada a safe place for Jews?
No. And. No.
Here is a longish interview I did on Thursday with Nigel Hannaford of Canada’s Western Standard media as well as a summary article he wrote about our interview.
In the immediate wake of Sydney, I began to explore and explain why what happened in Sydney could happen anywhere. Especially in Toronto. So far, Toronto Jews have just been luckier, in my opinion.
Within hours of the Bondi attack, the Free Palestine/pro Hamas “demonstrators” were given carte blanche to attack and harass Jews who attended a public Chanukah lighting event in the north end of Toronto. What went on - under the nose of the Toronto police - is blood curdling. Not only was the incitement to hate and violently attack Jews allowed to continue, but it was, arguably, torqued up a notch. Or ten.
And the police? They seemed to be in a jocular mood, joking and laughing with the antisemites. We’ll be publishing a more in depth look at that particular episode, with a full translation from the “song” blasted with loudspeakers to drown out the festive family gathering across the street. “Peaceful” lyrics were sung, among them jihad, M-16, smashing Jewish heads, Molotov cocktails. You get the drift.
We touched on this in our podcast published on Thursday. In the coming week we will be expanding on the conduct of police when it comes to Jews. In Toronto. It is outrageous two-tier policing and totally ignored by most mainstream media in Canada.
Talk about altering reality.
This is a very salient moment for Jewish people everywhere. It’s not just a Sydney problem.
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