Bondi Beach eyewitness: ‘I told my wife, Run! She grabbed our daughter. I grabbed my son. We hid as the bullets flew over our heads’

Haim Levy, who was at Bondi Beach, tells Channel 12 that he was sitting with his wife, son and daughter when the shooting started at the Hanukkah event.

“I suddenly saw smoke and heard cracks [of gunfire]. I couldn’t tell if it was into the air or at the crowd. But it was immediately clear that something [terrible] was happening.”

“I told my wife, ‘Run!’ She grabbed our daughter. I ran with my son. I hid with my son behind a car.  If you see the footage of the terrorists near a bridge, you’ll see there were cars parked there. For about 20 minutes, we heard gunfire over our heads. After about 20 minutes, I managed to jump over a fence (with my son) and get to our car, find my wife, and speed home.”

Levy, who says he grew up in Israel, decries the “insane antisemitism” in Australia now. “It was clear something like this would happen. I never imagined I’d be there with my wife and children.”

He blames the Australian government for “abandoning” the Jewish community.

He says his son, aged two, was crying as they hid, and he tried to silence him for fear that the terrorists would hear and come and kill them. “Thank God we survived, when bullets were flying in all directions… It seemed never-ending.”