Ostrovsky, an Australia-born human rights lawyer who had recently moved back with his wife Tzeira and their children from Israel to help the community fight antisemitism, told Sky News Australia, “There’s no greater fear, no greater horror, than not knowing where your family is.”

The fear, composure and resolve he demonstrated are characteristic of the broader community’s response to the terrorist attack that left at least 11 dead and dozens wounded at a Chanukah party organized by local Chabad-Lubavitch emissaries on the iconic coastal park.

The attack, which Prime Minister Anthony Albanese characterized as an antisemitic terrorist assault, was the deadliest of its kind in Australia’s history. It followed an escalating stream of incidents that surged after Oct. 7, 2023, and it profoundly shocked the members of Australia’s large Jewish community, where many Holocaust refugees and survivors had settled, thinking it’d be a haven from the hatred they’d fled.

“We have a multiculturalism which has been an absolute gift to communities like ours for two generations, but which lets in newcomers without requiring them explicitly, and with some force, to sign up to a set of values,” one Sydney-area Jewish lawyer told JNS.

Rabbi Mendel Kastel, whose brother-in-law, Rabbi Eli Schlanger, was among the 11 murdered on Sunday, declined to discuss politics before the identity and motives of the shooters are ascertained, and “when I have relatives who are dead and in the hospital,” he said. He added he wasn’t sure if communal Chanukah events would continue.

The New South Wales Jewish Board of Deputies, the representative organization for the Jewish community of that Australian state, whose capital is Sydney, sent out a letter to its members informing them of the indefinite suspension of public events, reflecting fears that the attack was part of a coordinated terror campaign.

Chanukah celebrations postponed

News of the attack caused Jewish communal life to grind to a halt nationwide, the lawyer, who spoke to JNS anonymously, said. Even if Chanukah events are all canceled, Kastel told JNS, “the Jewish community of Australia will stay strong. Our main message tonight is: We will get together, we will celebrate Chanukah, if not in synagogue or a venue then at home, we will get through this with help from God and our many non-Jewish allies and friends, many of whom have reached out.”

Speaking to Sky, Ostrovsky recalled the first moments of the attack, involving at least two shooters who fired on participants at “Chanukah on the Beach” for long minutes until one of them was disarmed heroically by an unarmed civilian, and the other was subdued by police.

One shooter is dead and another was severely wounded, Sky reported.

Ostrovsky had lived in Israel for the past 13 years, including during the war that broke out on Oct. 7, 2023. He arrived in Sydney last month to head the Sydney office of the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council (AIJAC), “to fight this bloodthirsty ravaging hatred,” he told Sky. “We’ve lived through worse; we’re going to get through this, and we’re going to get the bastards who did this,” he added.

He saw at least one gunman “firing randomly in all directions. I saw children falling to the floor… it was an absolute bloodbath, blood gushing everywhere,” Ostrovsky said.

The political context

As the initial shock subsided, some Australian Jews considered the political context that led to the attack, and whether it could be traced to how the government has handled the proliferation of antisemitic hatred in Australia alongside the anti-Israel vitriol that unfolded on the country’s streets after Oct. 7, 2023.

“It’s become an insult to call somebody a ‘Zio.’ Traditional antisemitic tropes appear in cartoons and in artwork without criticism. People in the media use words like ‘genocide’ in Gaza as factual descriptions that everybody must agree with. That’s the background here,” the lawyer said.

Andre Oboler, an expert member of Australia’s delegation to the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance, told JNS of “a lack of courage, allowing manifestations of hate to grow, rather than risk an escalation by confronting it. Slowly more and more space has been ceded to those promoting hate,” he said.

Israeli Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar also blamed Prime Minister Anthony Albanese, whose government has been more critical of Israel than many of its predecessors.

“These are the results of the antisemitic rampage in the streets of Australia over the past two years, with the antisemitic and inciting calls of ‘Globalize the Intifada’ that were realized today,” Sa’ar wrote.

Warnings ignored, critics say

Australian Jewish Association CEO Robert Gregory echoed these thoughts in a statement, calling that attack “a tragedy but entirely foreseeable.” The Albanese government “was warned so many times but failed to take adequate action to protect the Jewish community. Tonight, many Jews are pondering whether they have a future in Australia.”

Among the alleged errors attributed to Albanese and his Labor Party is the absence of legal action against any of the hundreds, or perhaps thousands, of people who were documented chanting either “gas the Jews” or “where’s the Jews” (the exact phrase is disputed) near the Sydney Opera House on Oct. 8, 2023, a day after Hamas terrorists murdered some 1,200 people in Israel and abducted another 251.

“When pro-Palestinian protests in both Sydney and Melbourne included antisemitic signs and chants, many marched with them, dismissing the presence of antisemitism as unimportant, and insufficient reason to distance themselves from those events,” Oboler, who’s also CEO of the Online Hate Prevention Institute and an adjunct associate professor at the La Trobe Law School, said, “We have even seen elected leaders marching with them, ignoring the concerns of the Jewish community over the signal that sends.”

Albanese has vowed to confront antisemitism vigorously, and authorities have blamed Iran for inciting and instigating some incidents targeting members of Australia’s Jewish community of more than 100,000 people. In August, Australia expelled the Iranian ambassador over this.

In parallel, the Albanese government pursued an increasingly hostile line on Israel.

It recognized a Palestinian state in September despite warnings that this would reward Hamas’s terrorism. Last year, Australia voted in favor of a U.N. General Assembly resolution that called on Israel to “bring to an end its unlawful presence in the Occupied Palestinian Territory as rapidly as possible,” endorsing language Australia had traditionally opposed, or abstained on.

Government response under scrutiny

Critics of the Albanese government allege it has downplayed the threat of antisemitism while emboldening perpetrators by unfairly singling out Israel.

Antisemitic incidents have proliferated in Australia, reaching a tally 1,654 cases between Oct. 1, 2024, and Sept. 30, 2025—roughly five times the annual average in the decade before the Hamas-led attack on Israel, according to statistics compiled by the Executive Council of Australian Jewry.

Still, Jew-hatred is neither intrinsic to Australian society nor representative of it, the Jewish lawyer told JNS. She has received messages of support from many non-Jewish acquaintances and colleagues after that attack, which left her “not feeling alone at all,” she said.

“I don’t think it’s a hotbed of antisemitism,” she said of Australia, though she added that “segments of our society are susceptible” to this hate.

The attack was so shocking to Australians, the lawyer added, that she believes it may have meaningful ramifications for how the political establishment confronts antisemitism going forward. “I think it probably will [change matters.]I don’t know how exactly. But the horror that I’m hearing from non-Jews, that’s new,” she said.