Jewish man reflects on terror attack in Australia, the footage that gave him hope

An Australian man with ties to South Florida is reflecting on the terror attack that claimed 15 lives during the first night of Hanukkah on Bondi Beach.

Dennis Rabinowitz shot video on Monday of a prayer for peace on the beach that was the scene of the mass shooting the day before.

“[The Jewish community in Australia is] pretty smashed about it. We’re all traumatized by it, but I think we all were expecting something to happen,” he told NBC6.

That uncomfortable feeling that something awful could take place is motivated by a series of antisemitic attacks in Australia. The country of 28 million people is home to about 117,000 Jews, according to official figures, and over the past year, has been rocked by antisemitic attacks in Sydney and Melbourne. Synagogues and cars were torched, businesses and homes graffitied and Jews attacked in those cities, where 85% of the nation’s Jewish population lives.

The massacre at Bondi Beach, which Australia’s federal police commissioner Krissy Barret said Tuesday was “a terrorist attack inspired by Islamic State,” is just the latest and most deadly.

Rabinowitz says it’s been an eye-opener for his country.

“I think it might be a bit of a watershed in that the lay population, or non-Jewish population, probably suddenly realizes what they have been, I wouldn’t say encouraging, but tolerating,” he said.

Rabinowitz has close ties to Miami, as much of his extended family lives there. He is also an advocate for peace between Israel and the Palestinian people.

Video of the shooting captured a man appearing to tackle and disarm one gunman, before pointing the man’s weapon at him, then setting the gun on the ground. The man was identified by Home Affairs Minister Tony Burke as Ahmed al Ahmed, a 42-year-old fruit shop owner and father of two who was shot in the shoulder.

Al Ahmed is an Australian citizen who migrated from Syria in 2006, his family said.

When asked if it gave him any sense of hope that it was a Muslim man who risked his own life to try to save others, Rabinowitz said: “Absolutely, absolutely. It was the best thing that could’ve happened, because you know, that proves to our community, too, that there are people of goodwill on all sides.”

Now, Rabinowitz says, it’s a matter of harnessing that goodwill of the majority to defeat the radical minority.