Among the victims of the deadly terrorist attack on a Jewish gathering at Bondi Beach in Sydney, Australia, was 87-year-old Alexander Kleytman. Born in 1938, he survived the Nazi occupation of his native Ukraine and fled to frosty Siberia in a risky train journey, endured decades of religious persecution in the Soviet Union, and ultimately made it to a welcoming, multicultural Australia in 1992. His story, of having escaped the Holocaust only to be gunned down in Australia by terrorists owing allegiance to the Islamic State (IS), underlines the scourge that has haunted the Jewish community for. a long time.
Anti-Semitism — hatred, discrimination and violence against Jews — has a long pedigree, dating back to the ancient empires of Babylonia, Greece, and Rome. This owed to the distinct cultural identity of the Jews and their unwillingness to act according to the diktats of conquerors. After the advent and spread of Christianity and Islam, the other two Abrahamic faiths, anti-Semitism intensified as state policy across Europe and West Asia, with the Jews being singled out and blamed for all sorts of socioeconomic problems due to their relative economic success and opposition to assimilation.
It bears reminding that this phenomenon — linked by some to present actions and policies of the State of Israel toward Palestinians — predates the creation of Israel in 1948 by several millennia. Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust, which killed six million Jews, drew upon pre-existing biases against the Jewish minority in Germany, long before they got a homeland or sanctuary in the form of the Israeli nation-State.
Seen through this prism of history, the IS terrorists involved in the Sydney attack were part of a ghastly tradition of intolerance, othering and scapegoating of the Jews, based on conspiracy theories and suspicions about their alleged disproportionate economic and political influence.
The current wave of anti-Semitism is fueled not just by the age-old negative stereotypes about the Jewish community, but also by their supposed “association with Israel”. Although less than 50% of the world’s Jewish population lives in Israel, the partition of Palestine to form the State of Israel sowed seeds of hatred against the Jewish people, particularly in Islamic societies.
Claims of Israel’s genocide of Palestinians in Gaza — following the war that broke out after the deadly terror attacks by Hamas on October 7, 2023 — have taken anti-Semitism to exponential heights. The Executive Council of Australian Jewry recorded 1,654 incidents of anti-Semitism in Australia between October 2024 and September 2025 — thrice the count in any year prior to 2023, when the war between Israel and Hamas started. As per the Anti-Defamation League, between 2021 and 2023, anti-Semitic incidents rose by 75% in Germany, 185% in France, and 82% in the UK.
The failure to draw a distinction between the actions of the Israeli State and military in Gaza and the depoliticised everyday lives of ordinary Jewish people across the globe has stoked this new wave of hatred. The ideology of IS and other such transnational Islamist terror outfits conflicts the two and paints the Jews as the primary enemies of Islam. The IS’s calls to its followers to attack Jews “wherever you find them” as part of a “religious war” have echoed through cyberspace.
The Bondi terrorists were undoubtedly motivated by extreme anti-Semitism. The fact that the two gunmen involved in the attack — a migrant from Hyderabad who had left India close to three decades ago and his son — had recently traveled to a hotbed of Islamist terrorism in the southern Philippines is a reminder that anti-Semitism may not have strict territorial boundaries.
Unearthing and foiling anti-Semitic plots will require far greater intelligence-sharing and cooperation at the international level. Just as Israel and India stepped up counter-terrorism collaboration to identify and neutralize threats after the 26/11 terrorist attacks in Mumbai, the Bondi terror attack should logically advance pre-emptive coalitions among spy agencies of Australia, Israel, India, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Malaysia. It is worth noting here that the Jews singled out and killed by Pakistani terrorists in the Mumbai attacks belonged to the same Chabad movement whose adherents were attacked in Sydney.
In the long run, a menace that dates so far back in history and is hydra-headed can only be countered through sustained education, consciousness-raising and initiatives for interfaith harmony. That Ahmed al Ahmed — a migrant to Australia and Muslim by faith — displayed extraordinary bravery in disarming one of the gunmen during the Bondi attack, offers hope. He should be held up as an ideal Muslim to young learners worldwide. Introducing Holocaust studies and courses on historical and contemporary anti-Semitism in school and university curricula is necessary to sensitize people about the injustices and sufferings faced by the Jewish people. Contrary to the jihadist narratives of a Jewish takeover of the most powerful institutions to dominate the planet, the community has frequently been on the sidelines of state power and policymaking.
Anti-Israel sentiments have sadly formed a massive blind spot within certain sections, even in democracies, towards the persecution of the Jews. The tragedy of Alexander Kleytman and his fellow victims at Bondi Beach should spur a serious rethink among intellectuals who equate, silently or explicitly, everything Israel does with the global Jewry and tolerate anti-Semitism as an understandable reaction to Israel’s policies. Hatred of Jews is a complex and historical phenomenon, and overcoming it is a challenge for the future of humanity.
Sreeram Chaulia is professor and dean, Jindal School of International Affairs. The views expressed are personal
