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Two years of open antisemitism, firebombings, synagogue attacks and a Muslim mob chanting ‘gas the Jews’ on the steps of the Opera House should have been impossible to ignore. Yet NSW Police treated the safety of Jewish Australians as a second-tier concern right up until the moment two gunmen turned Chanukah by the Sea into a slaughter.
The Antisemitism and Social Cohesion Royal Commission has now laid bare just how casually that threat was handled. The eastern suburbs commander, testifying under the pseudonym ABQ, admitted that the largest Jewish community safety program in the state simply “didn’t exist” by December 2025. Operation Shelter, which had provided visible protection at the same event in 2023 and 2024, had been “de-escalated” with no formal request for extra resources made to the region commander. Four roaming officers were all that stood between Jewish families and the killers.
Worse, “ABQ” didn’t even read an email specifically sounding the alarm on Bondi until after 15 Jewish Australians were slaughtered. Not, on her own admission, that she’d have bothered doing anything about it, anyway.
The NSW Police commander overseeing the Hanukkah event targeted by gunmen said she did not fully read an email warning the risk of a terror attack was “high” until after the massacre, but believes it wouldn’t have changed her decision to assign no static police guards.
Even though the email from the Jewish-run Community Security Group explicitly stated:
“The current security alert level for the NSW Jewish community is … high. A terrorist attack against the NSW Jewish community is likely, and there is a high level of antisemitic vilification.”
The email listed all the Jewish events set for the Hanukkah period in the region and outlined expected venues and crowd sizes. However, the eastern suburbs police commander, referred to as ABQ, today said she did not think she read past the start of the email to look at the specifics of each event.
So, what…? She got to the “Jewish” part and just hit the snooze button?
This was not an isolated lapse. It was the logical endpoint of institutional complacency that treated Jewish safety as someone else’s problem. No dedicated unit existed to monitor the specific and escalating threat. Warnings were filed rather than acted upon. And when the worst happened, the same agencies that had downplayed the danger suddenly discovered the virtues of hindsight.
The intimidation of witnesses appearing before the royal commission only underlines why it was needed. Commissioner Virginia Bell opened proceedings by noting the “dramatic increase in online hate messages” directed at Jewish witnesses and confirmed that one case had already been referred to the Australian Federal Police. Displaying a prohibited Nazi symbol outside the hearing building was apparently the least of it. The commission’s own work is now being obstructed by the very hatred it was established to examine.
Then there is the prime minister’s increasingly threadbare claim that security agencies had all the resources they required.
Anthony Albanese – who resisted calling the Bondi royal commission for more than three weeks after the attack – has always insisted the nation’s security agencies had all the resources they needed ahead of the Bondi massacre, but [Mike Burgess], the head of ASIO, revealed that his agency’s resources were “stretched” at the time of attack.
Even if he had asked for more money, Burgess said, he would have just been told to “offer up savings from elsewhere”.
The prime minister has refused to engage with the detail of the finding, swearing black and blue he has increased security agencies’ budgets.
As we all know, when Anthony Albanese swears something is true, you can lay good money that it’s completely and utterly false.
The royal commission was always going to be uncomfortable for a government that spent more than three weeks resisting calls for one. Every new tranche of evidence makes the reluctance more understandable. Police who could not be bothered to read a full threat assessment. A flagship community safety program allowed to wither just as the threat peaked. An intelligence agency stretched thin while the prime minister declares the cupboard was full. And now witnesses being harassed for daring to speak.
None of this is ancient history. It is the direct result of years of elite complacency that treated antisemitism as a fringe nuisance rather than a gathering storm. The Bondi massacre did not come out of nowhere. The warnings were there in writing. The institutions that were supposed to act simply chose not to read them properly, or to treat them as someone else’s job.
That is why the royal commission matters. Not for theatre, but because the pattern of denial, delay and institutional failure is now exposed in daylight. The question is no longer whether mistakes were made. It is whether anyone in authority will be held accountable for them.
