12 killed in Sydney beachside Chanukah event shooting

By AKIVA VAN KONIGSVELD 

Emergency responders on the scene of the terrorist attack at the “Chanukah by the Sea” on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia. (Photo via X)

The attack involved two gunmen, one of whom is believed to be among the fatalities, according to a New South Wales Police statement. Two policemen area among the dead and the second shooter sustained critical injuries, it added.

Shortly after the shooting occurred, police located a vehicle nearby which they believe contained several improvised explosive devices. Bomb disposal units worked to neutralize the devices, police said.

The terrorist attack took place at the “Chanukah by the Sea” celebration attended by thousands of people and organized by the Chabad-Lubavitch Center there for decades, according to Rabbi Motti Seligson, the spokesman for Chabad and confirmed by Amichai Chikli, Israel’s minister of diaspora affairs and combating antisemitism.

“I am in continuous contact with leaders of the Jewish community in Australia,” stated Chikli. “There are many casualties, including fatalities. I will provide updates as soon as additional details become available.”

According to Rabbi Seligson, one of the organization’s rabbis was among those murdered. The slain rabbi was identified as Eli Schlanger, a U.K.-born Chabad emissary in Sydney and the son-in-law of Rabbi Yehoram and Shternie Ulman, who direct the Chabad of Bondi Center there.

Rabbi Schlanger had been married to his wife Chaya for 18 years, and the two recently welcomed a new baby just a month ago.

The two gunmen began shooting sometime after the event began at 5:45 p.m. local time and, according to witnesses had time to reload and begin shooting again.

An middle-aged man (in white shirt) identified as Ahmed al-Ahmed strips the long rifle from one of two alleged terrorist shooters at Bondi Beach. (Screenshot)

Shortly after that, one middle-aged unidentified man charged one of the shooters with a rifle, stripped the terrorist of his weapon and kept him at bay until he joined his fellow shooter on a nearby bridge, where both were neutralized. 

Australian Prime Minister Antony Albanese told a press conference following the attack, “This afternoon, there has been a devastating terrorist incident at Bondi at the Chanukah by the Sea celebration.”

“This is a targeted attack on Jewish Australians on the first day of Chanukah—which should be a day of joy, a celebration of faith,” continued the premier.

“An act of evil antisemitism, terrorism, that has struck the heart of our nation,” he said. “An attack on Jewish Australians is an attack on every Australian.”

Alex Ryvchin, co-chief executive of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry, told Sydney radio station 2GB that the group’s director of media was injured in the attack, which he called “deliberate and very targeted.

Hundreds of people on Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia run from the scene of a terrortist shooting event at the “Chanukah by the Sea” event sponsored by Chabad of Bondi. (Screenshot)

“Hundreds of people were gathered. It’s a family event,” he said. “They heard, like, dozens of popping sounds. And people just started running, running over barricades, grabbing their children. It was mayhem.”

New South Wales state opposition leader Kellie Sloane, who was at the beach, called the shooting a “horrific attack on our way of life, a very targeted attack on our Jewish community,” speaking with Sky News.

“I was there when the shooting was still happening, and there was so many people. We were trying to we were trying to support people, we were trying to save people,” Sloane told the news outlet.

Four months ago, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu urged Albanese to confront what he called a “tsunami of antisemitism” that had spread in Australia since the Hamas-led Oct. 7, 2023, massacre.

 Netanyahu also slammed the decision by his Australian counterpart to recognize a Palestinian state while the Jewish state was still fighting “a war on behalf of Western civilization” as a “sign of weakness.”

CCJN editor Alan Smason contributed to this story.