From the Liveblog of
Sunday, December 14, 2025
Bloodied but ‘okay,’ Arsen Ostrovsky, who just moved from Israel to Sydney, describes ‘blood gushing in front of me’ on Bondi Beach
Add ToI as a Preferred Source on Google
Bandaged and his face covered in blood, Arsen Ostrovsky, an international human rights lawyer who recently moved from Israel to Sydney to work with the local Jewish community, has described the deadly terror attack as it unfolded around him and his family.
In an interview with Australian television, Ostrovsky, who chairs the Australia/Israel & Jewish Affairs Council in Sydney, describes the onslaught: “I was here with my family. It was a Hanukkah celebration. There were hundreds of people. There were children, there were elderly. Families enjoying themselves. Children, kids, at a festival, playing. Then all of a sudden, it’s absolute chaos. There’s guns, fire everywhere, people ducking. It was absolute chaos. We didn’t know what was happening, where the gunfire was coming from.”
“I saw blood gushing in front of me,” he goes on. “I saw people hit, saw people fall to the ground. My only concern was, Where are my kids? Where are my kids? Where’s my wife? Where’s my family?”
“I lived in Israel the last 13 years,” he continues. “We came here only two weeks ago to work with a Jewish community, to fight antisemitism, to fight this bloodthirsty, ravaging hatred.”
My friend Arsen Ostrovsky, injured in the horrific, bloody attack in Sydney on a Jewish community Hanukkah celebration: pic.twitter.com/4iUAWdAYig
— Michael Dickson (@michaeldickson) December 14, 2025
Recalling Hamas’s October 7, 2023, invasion and massacre in Israel, he says: “We’ve lived through worse. We’re going to get through this, and we’re going to get the bastards that did this.”
Asked whether he saw the gunmen, Ostrovsky replies: “I did. I saw at least one gunman firing, with what looked like a shotgun, firing randomly in all directions. I saw children falling to the floor, elderly…”
“It was an absolute bloodbath, blood gushing everywhere. October seventh, that’s the last time I saw this,” he notes. (Ostrovsky has described being at Kibbutz Be’eri days after the Hamas onslaught.)
“I never thought I would see this in Australia. Not in my lifetime… On Bondi Beach, of all places, this iconic place.”
Asked about his family, he says: “My children, my wife is safe, thank God. They’re okay. They managed to get away. But I didn’t know where they were. There’s no greater fear, no greater horror, [than] not knowing where your family is. They’re okay. I’ll be okay.”
“I got hit in the head, I’m bleeding, I’ve lost blood,” he says. “There are people around me that are far worse. I’ll be okay. We’ll be okay as a community,” he adds, insisting that the hatred will be defeated.
Ostorovsky told the Daily Mail that “a bullet grazed my head” and “doctors said it was a miracle I survived.”
The Times of Israel Community.