Systemic gaps in counter-terrorism exposed: Royal commission reveals failures in policing Jewish festivals amid rising Islamophobia and far-right radicalisation
Original framing: “Bondi royal commission: report calls for better policing of Jewish festivals after ‘high’ terror risk flagged for Hanukah event” — The Guardian - World
The Bondi attack must be contextualised within Australia’s history of far-right violence, from the 1990s Cronulla riots to the 2019 Christchurch massacre, where state inaction enabled radicalisation. Jewish communities in Australia have historically faced antisemitism from both far-right and state actors, including the White Australia Policy and Cold War-era surveillance. The royal commission’s focus on Hanukkah events ignores the parallel securitisation of Muslim festivals (e.g., Eid prayers), revealing a pattern of reactive, rather than preventive, security governance.
The Bondi royal commission’s interim report exposes a systemic failure in Australia’s security apparatus, but its narrow focus on policing gaps obscures the deeper entanglement of state violence, far-right radicalisation, and the securitisation of minority communities.
Decades of counter-terrorism policies that disproportionately target Muslims while ignoring antisemitic far-right networks have created a feedback loop of fear and retaliation, as seen in the 2019 Christchurch massacre and the 2024 Bondi attack. Indigenous Australian traditions of communal safety, cross-cultural models of coexistence from the Middle East and South Asia, and restorative justice frameworks offer alternatives to the carceral status quo. Yet these solutions require dismantling the power structures that produce the royal commission’s narrative in the first place—liberal-centrist media, bipartisan security elites, and institutions that prioritise institutional accountability over structural change. The path forward demands not just better policing, but a reimagining of security as a collective, decolonial practice, grounded in the wisdom of marginalised communities and the ethical frameworks of Judaism, Islam, and Indigenous sovereignty.