SYDNEY — Government authorities have not done enough to stamp out hatred of Jews in Australia, allowing it to fester in the aftermath of October 7, according to the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who was wounded at the Bondi Beach terror shooting on Sunday.
Victoria Teplitsky, 53, a retired childcare center owner, said that the father and son who went on a 10-minute shooting spree that killed 15 people at a Hanukkah event had been “taught to hate,” which was a bigger factor in the attack than access to guns.
“It’s not the fact that those two people had a gun. It’s the fact that hatred has been allowed to fester against the Jewish minority in Australia,” she told Reuters in an interview.
“We are angry at our government because it comes from the top, and they should have stood up for our community with strength. And they should have squashed the hatred rather than kind of letting it slide,” she said. “We’ve been ignored. We feel like — are we not Australian enough? Do we not matter to our government?”
Antisemitic incidents have been rising in Australia since Hamas launched its October 7 massacre in southern Israel, which sparked the two-year war in Gaza. A rise in such incidents over the past 16 months prompted the head of the nation’s main intelligence agency to declare that antisemitism was his top priority in terms of threat.
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“This was not a surprise to the Jewish community. We warned the government of this many, many times over,” Teplitsky said.
Victoria Teplitsky, who is the daughter of a victim of Bondi, lays some truth bombs about the biased ABC.#auspol #springst pic.twitter.com/WrY6fHCOzB
— JAKE FLAGPIES23 ???????????? (@IncrediblyBozza) December 16, 2025
“We’ve had synagogues that have been graffitied, graffiti everywhere, and we’ve had synagogues that have been bombed,” she added, referring to a 2024 arson attack in Melbourne in which no one was killed.
Teplitsky’s father Semyon, 86, bled heavily after being shot in the leg, and now is facing several operations as doctors piece bone back together with cement, then remove the cement from the leg, which he still may lose, she said.
“He’s in good spirits, but he’s also very angry. Angry that this happened, that this was allowed to happen in Australia, the country that he took his children to, to be safe, to be away from antisemitism, to be away from Jew hatred.”
Israeli Ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon also urged the Australian government to do more to secure the lives of Jews in Australia.
“Only Australians of Jewish faith are forced to worship their gods behind closed doors, CCTV, guards,” Maimon told reporters in Bondi on Tuesday, after laying flowers at the temporary memorial and paying his respects to the victims. “My heart is torn apart… it is insane.”
Maimon said that since he arrived in Australia almost four years ago, “I was very clear. And I was very clear about the dangers of the rise in antisemitism.”
Israeli Ambassador to Australia Amir Maimon (L) lays flowers at the Bondi Pavilion memorial in Sydney on December 16, 2025, honoring the victims of the Hanukkah terror attack. (DAVID GRAY / AFP)
“I’m not sure that my vocabulary is rich enough to express how I feel,” the Israeli envoy added. “My heart is torn apart because the Jewish community, the Australians of Jewish faith, the Jewish community is also my community. My people. The people that were brutally murdered here are people that I have known. I have met.”
While Australia has historically been considered a relatively safe environment for its Jewish minority, a range of incidents in the past few years signaled shifting dynamics. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry published a report in early December, less than two weeks before the shooting, warning of a “pattern of unprecedented harassment, threats and incitement.”
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said Monday that Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese “did nothing” to curb antisemitism.
Albanese rejected Netanyahu’s assertion that Canberra’s recognition of a Palestinian state earlier this year fueled antisemitism in Australia.
At a press briefing on Monday, Albanese read through a list of actions his government had taken, including criminalizing hate speech and incitement to violence and a ban on the Nazi salute. He also pledged to extend funding for physical security for Jewish community groups.
Agencies contributed to this report.
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