Rabbi at Bondi vigil: Those who shouted ‘Gas the Jews’ or ‘Where’s the Jews’ at demonstrations weren’t stopped

A Chabad rabbi tells a vigil at Bondi Beach that community leaders had warned the government that anti-Israel protests were endangering the Jewish community, highlighting an infamous protest in Sydney days after October 7, 2023.

Fifteen people were killed and dozens injured when two terrorists opened fire at a Hanukkah event run by Chabad at Sydney’s Bondi Beach.

“We begged, ‘Shut these demonstrations down, legislate for it, find the legal means,’” Rabbi Nochum Schapiro from North Shore Chabad tells the crowd, according to the Sydney Morning Herald.

“And those who shouted ‘Gas the Jews,’ or ‘Where’s the Jews’ – what difference does it make, same vile statements – were not prosecuted, were not stopped, were not sent out of the country. Were allowed to continue with this vile hate. So we ask [politicians] now: Legislate,” he says.

Schapiro was referring to an infamous protest in Sydney a few days after October 7, 2023, in which video appeared to show protesters chanting “Gas the Jews.” However, New South Wales police later claimed there was no evidence of the chant.

Schapiro says he wrote to Australian Prime Minister Antony Albanese in August to warn him that a recognition of Palestinian statehood would endanger the Jewish community.

“I didn’t even get a response,” he says. “You cannot disconnect the Jewish people from the Jewish land. The Jewish people and the Jewish land are one.”

“And when you vilify the leaders of the Jewish land of Israel, and when you constantly criticize them and then say that they must give up parts of this land… that endangers Jews everywhere,” he says, according to the Herald.

“When Israel is criticized, then the way it’s received by the antisemites is that it’s okay to attack Jews,” Schapiro says.