At Bondi Beach, as Sydney’s Jewish community gathered to celebrate Hanukkah the Festival of Light marking the sacred first night by kindling the first candle of the menorah, an unspeakable act of terror shattered a moment meant for joy, faith, and communal warmth.
Vile, demonic terrorista carried out a barbaric attack, leaving eleven innocent Jews wounded and drenched in blood. On a day that should have embodied celebration and spiritual renewal, this appalling and ghastly assault devastated Australian society. Such brutality is rare in a nation of 28 million people, home to approximately 117,000 Jews. Yet the shock of its rarity does not lessen the horror of its reality.
While earlier attacks on synagogues in August revealed the hidden hand of Tehran’s theocratic terror regime, the immediate hours following this crime have not yet formally tied the Bondi Beach atrocity to the Islamic Republic. Still, the ideological fingerprints of Islamist terror anti-Jewish hatred sanctified by dogma are unmistakable.
In today’s world, bloodthirsty terrorists, unbound by law or humanity, driven by innate savagery and orders from an Islamist “caliph” dictator in Tehran seek to export crisis and carnage into advanced, pluralistic societies among civilized people. Australia, guided by humane principles, has opened its doors to followers of many faiths from across the globe. Yet it has often overlooked a bitter truth: the malignant doctrine of Jew-hatred and Islamist terrorism targeting Jewish communities - and later others - traces its roots back to Tehran.
Before the eyes of the world, the vampire-like despot of Tehran, Ali Khamenei, has created and cultivated multiple Islamist terrorist groups to form a ring of fire around Israel the sacred homeland of the Jewish people. The playbook of Khomeini and Khamenei has always been the same: hostility toward Israel and the systematic incitement of violence against Jews.
Over the past forty-seven dark years of Islamist dictatorship in Iran, hundreds of crimes against Jews have occurred worldwide. The Islamic Republic’s terrorists and murderers abetted at various times by actors in Qatar, Turkey, the Muslim Brotherhood, Sudan, and Libya have for years cynically used civilians as human shields. Their aim has been clear: when Israel responds in self-defense, to activate their propaganda machinery, manufacture media chaos, and disseminate shameless lies and a nauseating ideology built on hatred of Jews and Israel.
The Hamas terrorist organization provided a brutal example on October 7, 2023, when it massacred 1,200 innocent people in Israel in a single night. When Israel responded, Hamas’s cowardly killers hid among women and children. Even here in Australia, demonstrations were held against Israel yet no mass protests were organized to condemn Hamas’s savagery. One major newspaper even published the claim that “Khamenei did not order Hamas to attack,” while those same media outlets refused to publish articles exposing the crimes of Tehran’s dictator.
Why?
For fear of offending Islamist extremists who have found refuge within Australian society? Because the moment one names “Islamist terrorism,” a chorus erupts about mercy, compassion, and benevolence while in the so-called “verses of combat” that dominate their ideological playbook, there is not a single word about love.
After today’s crime at Bondi Beach, has anyone heard the psychopathic criminal Ali Khamenei condemn the satanic terrorist who attacked Jews in Sydney?
Ultimately, it must be said plainly: Australia-along with its domestic security institutions and counterterrorism centers faces a long and perilous road in confronting Islamist terrorism. For years, Australia has become a haven for Islamist leaders, including affiliates of the Islamic Republic, who have spread across Australia and New Zealand like a lethal contagion, capable of striking at any moment.
According to documented data, 1,654 anti-Jewish incidents were recorded across Australia between 1 October 2024 and 30 September 2025, in addition to 2,062 incidents nationwide the year before.
What is the underlying objective of Tehran’s Khomeinist, mullah-led terrorist regime in relentlessly fueling antisemitism in Australia?
Among those killed in today’s Sydney attack was Rabbi Eli Schlanger, who had been leading the Hanukkah celebration. His death and his spilled blood stand as a solemn signature one that affirms this truth: the pure Jewish faith, and the Jewish people of the Holy Land of Israel, will prevail in the struggle against Islamist terrorism. This cancerous growth afflicting the body of human civilization will, in the end, be surgically removed.
Erfan Fard is a counter-terrorism analyst and Middle East Studies researcher based in Washington, DC. an expert in Middle Eastern regional security affairs with a particular focus on Iran, Counter terrorism, IRGC, MOIS and Ethnic conflicts in MENA. He graduated in International Security Studies (London M. University, UK), and in International Relations (CSU-LA). He is fluent in Persian, Kurdish, Arabic and English. / Follow him in this twitter account @EQFARD