My family and I were supposed to be at Bondi Beach earlier in the evening. We were late because my daughter fell asleep in the car and I was with my parents.
That small delay — so ordinary it barely registered — placed us behind the gunmen instead of ahead of them.
My brother was there. He was on duty, volunteering for community security. Twenty minutes before the attack, his commander moved him from the bridge where the shooters would later take position.
This is how close we came to being killed that day. Although, everyone in Bondi knows someone who was injured or killed.
On Dec. 14, the Jewish community came to Bondi Beach to rejoice. Families arrived with prams and toddlers. Children with painted faces ran between stalls. Grandparents watched on with joy. Sufganiyot, laughter, a petting zoo, a climbing wall — simple things, sacred things. Jews gathered to celebrate Hanukkah, the ancient story of light enduring in darkness.
Then the darkness arrived.
For nearly 10 endless-seeming minutes, people were hunted. Killed where they stood. Parents watched their children fall. Children watched parents murdered. A holy day meant to honor life was desecrated by those who worship death.
Australians around the country were shocked, but many in the Jewish community were not. Jews have seen this movie before. Allegedly inspired by ISIS, the terrorists did not target the Australian government, they targeted Jews — families, children, even Holocaust survivors.
My brother, a young father with a newborn and a five-year-old at home, volunteers for community security not because it is glamorous but because the Jewish community knows we have to protect ourselves, despite empty words that the government will protect us.
When the shooting began, instinct told him to run. He stayed.
He guided families to shelter, ushering parents, babies, and grandparents beneath a stage. He watched a rabbi fall. A Holocaust survivor. A child. A police officer. Death moving without discrimination.
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When the gunfire stopped, he didn’t. He performed CPR alongside lifeguards. His friend was shot and remains hospitalized.
Bondi now joins a growing list of recent antisemitic attacks, many of which barely make headlines: a Jewish couple murdered in Washington, D.C.; a Jewish woman burned to death in Colorado; a Jewish family’s home shot at in Redlands, California; a Hillel building set on fire in San Francisco.
Synagogues vandalized. Schools threatened. Security guards now stationed at every and any Jewish gathering.
Each incident was treated as isolated. Each warning absorbed — and ignored.
Bondi Beach is a remarkable city: Jews make up more than 20 percent of its population, yet it is home to people of every background. When the bullets came, they did not ask for politics or passports.
This was an attack on a basic promise of civilized society: that people can express who they are in public without fear, that joy is not a provocation for violence, and that children are safe in broad daylight.
History offers lessons, but we often ignore them until it’s too late.
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When cruelty is normalized, when hatred is disguised as righteousness, when lies are repeated until they are taken as truth — this is when extremism thrives. Again and again, Jews are placed at the fault line where dangerous ideas turn into real-world violence.
Slavery. Inquisitions. Pogroms. The Holocaust. October 7th. Bondi.
Jews do not seek the role of victim. We inherit it when the world loses its moral bearings. We become the mirror reflecting back what society refuses to see in itself.
Since Oct. 7, 2023, it seems antisemitism has been normalized in many public spaces. Ancient tropes repackaged as political certainty: In the Israel-Palestine conflict, Jews cast as Nazis, supporters of genocide, baby killers. Dehumanization and demonization dressed up as activism.
As someone who works inside the entertainment industry, I know how powerful stories are in shaping reality. Repetition creates permission.
A civilized society must draw lines. When it doesn’t, someone else redraws them in blood. And far too often, in Jewish blood.
It takes courage to draw lines. When my brother responded to help victims amidst chaos, he stood for humanity. More people should follow his example.
We are not bystanders to culture. We are its architects. We decide which stories are elevated, which voices are amplified, and which behavior is excused as “complicated” or “controversial.” We cannot claim shock when violence follows rhetoric we refused to confront. Yes, silence is violence.
This is not a call to police political views or shut down debate. It is a call to draw a line — clearly and publicly — between criticism and dehumanization, between dissent and incitement.
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In Hollywood, we know how powerful stories are. We make a living shaping them. The question is whether we are willing to accept responsibility for the ones we’ve allowed to metastasize — or whether we will keep insisting that culture and consequences are unrelated, even as Jewish blood keeps proving otherwise.
Tanya Cohen is a managing partner at Range Media Partners and an advisory board member of Creative Community for Peace.
