By: Nomi Kaltmann as seen in the Times of Israel
7 February 2026
MELBOURNE — Reuven Morrison was among the 15 people murdered on December 14 in the deadliest terror attack in Australian history. He was attending a Hanukkah event organized by the local Chabad House at Bondi Beach when he was gunned down. Morrison’s final moments, captured on video, depict him fighting against the self-described “anti-Zionist” terrorists with a brick.
“I never believed that this kind of hatred and violence could happen here, especially in the peaceful country my father chose to call home when he immigrated here at 14 years of age from the former USSR,” said his daughter, Sheina Gutnick.
The attack at Bondi Beach stunned Australia and sent shockwaves through its Jewish community and population at large. Mass shootings are extremely rare in Australia, and the Bondi attack was the country’s first since the 1996 Port Arthur massacre, which saw 35 killed and 23 wounded.
Within weeks of the attack on Bondi, Australia’s federal parliament was recalled from its summertime recess and sweeping new laws were rushed through, focused on tighter gun control measures and stronger powers to combat hate speech and extremist groups.
President Isaac Herzog, who is due to arrive in Australia on Sunday for a five-day visit, was also invited by Prime Minister Anthony Albanese in the aftermath of the deadly shooting.
Australia is generally considered to have strict gun ownership laws, implemented after the 1996 massacre, when a national buyback scheme removed tens of thousands of firearms from circulation. Despite these controls, the Bondi attack revealed vulnerabilities in Australia’s approach to gun regulation.
It also exposed a dramatic rise in antisemitism within the country, which Australian Jews had noted for the last two years.
The Times of Israel has reported that since the bloody October 7, 2023, Hamas-led terror onslaught sparked the Israel-Hamas war in Gaza, Jews in Australia have seen synagogues, schools and homes firebombed, two nurses threatening to kill Jewish patients in their hospital, and the discovery of a trailer filled with explosives said to have been intended to cause a mass-casualty event at a Sydney synagogue.
Attacks against Jewish and Israeli institutions worldwide have increased exponentially since the October 7 atrocities, but the spike in Australia — one of the hardest-hit communities in the world — is still deeply shocking to Australian Jews, many of whom are the children and grandchildren of Holocaust survivors.
After two years of what many Australian Jews deemed an insufficient government response to protect the community, the Bondi attack forced a national reckoning and an enormous outpouring of grief. Albanese found himself under intense pressure from Jewish Australians and the Australian public to act swiftly and decisively. Public frustration with the government’s initial response was palpable, with many accusing it of failing to take the threat of antisemitic violence seriously enough. At Jewish community events, Albanese was heckled and booed.
At first, in the weeks after the attack, Albanese resisted calls for a royal commission, Australia’s highest form of independent inquiry, which includes powers to investigate systemic failures and make recommendations. Royal commissions in Australia are significant legal processes that can compel witnesses and uncover uncomfortable truths about government or institutional failings. But as criticism mounted and a significant public pressure campaign led by the families of the Bondi victims began, Albanese finally agreed to the commission, signalling the government’s recognition of the attack’s gravity.
Pomp and protests
The government’s invitation to Herzog in the wake of the attack caused dissent within the Labor Party, but the government has framed it as standard diplomatic protocol.
“We have the Australian Jewish community, who have been targeted in an overtly antisemitic terrorist attack. We have had 15 Australians die, we have families mourning, and this was a request from the Jewish community for President Herzog to visit,” said Australian Foreign Minister Penny Wong, herself a fierce critic of Israel, in an interview with ABC radio.
The anti-Israel Palestine Action Group has announced a protest against Herzog’s visit. The New South Wales police has extended certain restrictions on protests that were enacted following the Bondi attack, citing the behavior of some protesters who “continue to incite violence and cause fear and harm.”
Meanwhile, the non-Zionist Jewish Council of Australia has called for Herzog to be “arrested or barred from entering Australia,” and Australian human rights lawyer Chris Sidoti has called on Albanese to rescind the invitation or arrest Herzog on arrival for inciting “genocide.”
In an interview with the Sydney Morning Herald published Friday, Herzog called Sidoti’s statements “another lie and another distortion of the facts,” adding that he was visiting the country to “visit my sisters and brothers of the Jewish community to console and pay our respects to the grieving families and to the community.”
The planned protest highlights concerns by some that the visit could inspire more backlash against an already beleaguered local Jewish community. But Mike Kelly, a former Labor minister and the current co-head of Labor Friends of Israel, thinks the visit will be successful.
“It has the potential to recalibrate the relationship between Federal Labor and Israel. I know there will be national demonstrations [against Herzog’s visit], and accusations that he is a war criminal, but that’s just ridiculous,” said Kelly. “Herzog is a progressive — he fought for gay rights in Israel, and he fought for climate change, he has been a voice for peace, and he supports the two-state solution, and this is the exact type of person you want to be engaging with. He is coming here to show solidarity and healing with the Jewish community.”
While officials said during a press conference earlier in the week that police knew of “no particular… threat” to Herzog, a 19-year-old Sydney man was granted bail on Thursday after he was charged with making online threats to the Israeli president.
Grieving family embraces compensatory measures
Gutnick, who has become a leading voice in calling for the royal commission, expressed satisfaction with the government’s decision to go ahead with a royal commission.
“It’s a big relief to know that the government is now going to properly investigate how my father and so many other Australian Jews could be murdered on Bondi Beach,” she said.
In addition to the royal commission, legislation was also hurriedly announced. The legislation criminalizes leadership or support of extremist hate groups, increases penalties for hate crimes, and gives authorities the power to ban organizations and cancel visas of individuals who promote hatred. It also includes new gun control measures in the first national gun buyback scheme since 1996, the removal of certain firearms from circulation, a tightening of background checks, and the creation of new powers to tackle hate speech and extremist groups.
Despite broad support for stronger protections, the legislation sparked heated debate. Critics warned that some parts of the laws were rushed and could infringe on personal freedoms. Some firearm owners and political opponents argued that lawful gun owners were being unfairly targeted. And some leaders in the Jewish community felt that the laws did not go far enough to address hate speech and extremist violence.
The controversy also split Australia’s main opposition bloc, which is made up of two parties, the Liberal Party and the rural-focused National Party. Several National Party politicians opposed giving the government expanded powers to ban organizations and cancel visas, arguing that such powers could be misused to restrict free speech or be applied unfairly to minority groups.
Jeremy Leibler, president of Australia’s Zionist Federation, voiced disappointment that the laws did not fully implement recommendations made by the government’s Special Envoy for Antisemitism, Jillian Segal, who released a report in July 2025, with detailed recommendations on how to combat antisemitism in Australia.
Even less than two weeks before the attack, The Times of Israel reported, the Executive Council of Australian Jewry published a report that highlighted 1,654 antisemitic incidents committed against the country’s roughly 120,000-strong Jewish community between October 1, 2024, and September 30, 2025 — about five times the annual average recorded in the decade leading up to the October 7 Hamas invasion.
“The laws did not go as far as we would have liked, particularly in fully implementing the recommendations of the Special Envoy for Antisemitism,” Leibler said.
However, Leibler still noted some positive results.
“Given Parliament was recalled early, and the legislation was developed and passed under significant time pressure, they delivered some important outcomes,” he said. “Most notably, they created a new mechanism to proscribe extremist hate groups that have until now remained lawful, including Hizb ut Tahrir. That is a meaningful and necessary step forward.”
Hizb ut Tahrir is a pan-Islamist fundamentalist political organization advocating for an Islamic caliphate and the implementation of sharia law globally.
Can new legislation really protect Jews?
Despite these measures, some experts remain skeptical about the government’s ability to protect Jewish Australians from future attacks. Josh Bornstein, a prominent Jewish lawyer and an advisory committee member of the Jewish Council of Australia, a newer Jewish organization formed after October 7, represents a non-Zionist Australian Jewish perspective.
“I am not optimistic about the capacity of any state to effectively protect Jews from such attacks. So-called ‘lone wolf’ attacks are notoriously difficult to stop,” he said.
Bornstein also linked the rise in antisemitism in Australia to the ongoing conflict in Gaza.
“I am confident that if Palestinians enjoyed dignity, security and equality, that we would see a substantial decline in antisemitism [in Australia],” he said.
Philip Dalidakis, a former Labor minister in Victoria and member of the Jewish community, felt the new laws are “necessary but not sufficient.”
“Laws matter, but enforcement matters more,” he said. “We have seen systemic failures by state police in enforcing existing laws and a failure by state governments to pursue prosecutions.”
Dalidakis called for the Muslim Brotherhood to be added to Australia’s list of proscribed terrorist organizations.
“Protecting the Jewish community requires a comprehensive, whole-of-government approach rather than a single legislative fix,” he said.
Dalidakis also acknowledged the prime minister’s shift in position.
“We often criticize our leaders for not listening, but now that he has, people need to give him credit. To be clear, I would have preferred this action much earlier. But [Prime Minister] Albanese did listen to the community and families who lost loved ones. He changed his position completely and brought Parliament back early to get the laws passed. It was late, but better late than never.”
For Gutnick, the focus remains on the royal commission and the search for answers about the circumstances that led to her father’s murder.
“We deserve to know what went wrong and why our community wasn’t protected. I hope we get the answers we deserve,” she said.