Richard Marles (Corio, Australian Labor Party, Minister for Defence) Share this | Hansard source

A day or two after 14 December the remarkable story emerged of a couple in their 60s, Boris and Sofia Gurman. Grainy, dashcam footage captured them trying to confront the gunmen right at the start as they were getting out of their car. Incredibly, it looks like, without any training—Boris, a retired mechanic, and Sofia having worked at Australia Post—they will prevail, appearing to disarm one of the gunmen. But then another gun is found, and, heartbreakingly, both Boris and Sofia are shot and killed, becoming the first victims of the Bondi massacre. What I find utterly astonishing about their actions is how intentional they were. This was not a reflex. They didn't have to put their lives on the line. In fact, the more obvious path to have walked would in all likelihood have seen them alive on this day. Yet, in that moment, they staked all that they had, all that they had been, to defend those around them. As did Reuven Morrison, who threw a brick at one of the gunmen until Morrison, too, lost his life.

Ahmed al-Ahmed threw himself at one of the terrorists. In the days after Bondi I was speaking with Rabbi Marcus Solomon, who could see the actions of Ahmed al-Ahmed only in the context of the literal workings of God. Facing two people with a shockingly distorted world view, here was this man, Ahmed al-Ahmed—a word which means 'peace' in Islam, a faith that holds as a tenet that the taking of an innocent life is a terrible sin—who risked his own life to protect those around him irrespective of their religion.

What these four people and others did was to change the equation in that moment and for all time, because while the gunmen might have expected to have it all their own way, for it to be a free-for-all, they found themselves instead on contested ground. We will never know the names of those who were saved as a result, nor how many, but when you consider that there were a thousand people attending the Chabad community event on that busy summer Sunday evening at Bondi, those who might reasonably say, 'But for their actions, death may also have become me,' must surely be numbered in the hundreds. In the middle of this tragedy, their actions stand forth like a shining beacon.

Bondi is the moment that terrorism came to our shores, to an iconic landmark of our nation. But the Bondi massacre was a clear and calculated attack on Jewish Australians. It was an horrific act of antisemitism which, on the one hand, took the life of 87-year-old Alexander Kleytman, a survivor of the Holocaust, and on the other, the life of Matilda Britvan, who at the joyful age of 10 was, literally, distilled potential. So much has been said about antisemitism in the last month and in the last two years. It may be tempting for some to think, given antisemitism has existed for millennia, 'What on earth can we possibly do?' Yet in the very many conversations I have had with members of the Jewish community, what they have all consistently said to me is that for many, and for most of their lives, antisemitism is far from having defined their experience as Jewish Australians—in fact, it is quite the contrary. In a world in which antisemitism exists, Australia had been a safe harbour.

It's against that backdrop of relative historic normality that the Jewish community today is so shocked, traumatised, that their kids going to Jewish schools have to do so behind high walls and with a 24/7 protective guard and that, when kids are leaving school, they have to get out of their uniform on campus so they cannot be readily identifiable on the streets—where the logos are taken off the buses for the same reason, and the same way of operating applies to Jewish aged-care facilities, to Jewish community centres and to synagogues. It has become difficult, if not impossible, for the community to celebrate with joy their culture and religion, without fear. So, rightly, the Jewish community asks today: in Australia, how is that okay? In the land of the fair go, how is that fair? If there is to be any meaning coming out of this tragic event, it must be in the resolution of this question.

The legacy of Bondi has to be that we return to the Jewish community the Australia that they once knew and, in the process, as we aspire to eliminate all forms of prejudice from our country, we seek to provide to each and every citizen the full promise of Australia.

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