Yesterday is a day that none of us who know Sydney will forget. On the first night of Hanukkah, as people gathered in joy and community on Bondi Beach, gunmen opened fire on families picnicking together, killing dozens and injuring many more in yet another brutal act of Islamic terrorism.
Sydney will always have a special place in my heart. I lived there for a year after university and unexpectedly fell in love with this vibrant city. Having been sent over by my London model agency to take part in a Becks Beer commercial, I was certain that I would fly straight home.
But Sydney turned out to be paradise: after days working for local agency Viviennes, I would swap catwalks and castings for something far simpler and purer: the sea, the sand and wonderful people.
To see such evil against such a heavenly backdrop is too horrific to countenance.
The Bondi Icebergs sea pool, bracing in the early morning, was the perfect start to any day. The only sounds should be the splash of kicking feet - not gunfire.
I remember the feeling of freedom running from Bondi to Bronte beach at dusk — a famous coastal path where nothing seemed impossible and every step felt like you were flying over sunlit rock shelves and crashing Pacific waves. It was - and will hopefully remain - the perfect place to consider your future when your whole life is ahead of you.
Sydney was home for that year, surrounded by the friendliest, most open people I had ever met – true, frank-speaking Aussies for whom a laugh, a punchline and the offer of a beer was never far away.
At that time - the late 1990s - Sydney’s Muslim population was so small that it is hard to find a definitive number. Best estimates suggest that it did not exceed a few tens of thousands and a low single-digit percentage of the city's population.
The 2025 census is expected to reveal 330,000 to 350,000 muslims, approximately 6–7 per cent of the total Sydney population. Australia’s Muslim population as a whole has almost quadrupled over recent decades — from about 282,000 in 2001 to 813,000 in 2021.
In the late '90s, my friends and I would grab lunch at Thai Terrific on Bondi Road — chicken laksas and cold white wine — and on weekends, you could find me in the surf with a boogie board under my arm, laughing in the sunshine with people I barely knew but grew to love. It was a place of warmth, sunlight and inexpensive, ordinary joy.
The Bondi Beach massacre was not just about antisemitism. We are also facing a medieval hatred - Bev Turner | Getty Images
For many here in America, Sydney lives in the imagination as a far-off paradise. But for those who have walked its cliffs, dipped in its oceans, known its rhythms and tastes of late-afternoon light, today feels close. I regularly recall, decades on, jogging past the very stretch of sand where children play, lovers stroll, and where — tonight — grief and gunshot still echo around the walls.
Earlier this year, I wrote about another act of sheer cruelty — the synagogue stabbing in Prestwich that shook Greater Manchester. It reminded us then, as it does now, how quickly everyday peace can be shattered.
We mourned the victims, but quickly the news cycle moved on; nothing changed; leaders expressed their sympathy, but Islamic extremism fortifies its foothold and jews start to flee their hometowns. It is happening in the UK, and now it will happen in Australia, eventually leaving a religious imbalance that nobody in power wants to talk about.
The stabbing in Prestwich was an attack on the community; this is an attack on family, on faith, on the very public fabric of a city that rejoices in beachside gatherings and celebrations of identity and values.
Just as in Europe, there has been a rise in antisemitic incidents across Australia over recent years, tied tragically to global conflict. This latest carnage is not just an assault on Jewish Australians but on the values of pluralism and safety that the nation holds dear.
Sydney is a city that has faced tragedy before: the shock of the 1996 Port Arthur massacre in Tasmania led Australia to dramatically reshape its gun laws and the way it thinks about public safety.
Programmes, reform and resilience came out of that nightmare, but the wounds never fully disappeared. Yesterday's attack — now one of the deadliest mass shootings in Australia’s history — is a reminder that no society is immune to Islamic hatred and violence.
My memories of Sydney will always be of sun-drenched beaches, of community spirit and of joy. Bondi was never just a picture postcard — it was a place of vast freedom and harmless pleasure.
I remember standing on those cliffs at sunrise, watching the town wake up below, a cup of coffee in hand and a whole lifetime ahead of me. I remember flying along waves with my boogie board and smiling at strangers who became friends under that enormous sky.
Bondi is a place so pure that it almost defines the best of humanity: hedonism, nature, sunshine and connection. We must honour the lives cut short, the families shattered, the innocent hearts grieving. But we must also honour the spirit of the community there — a spirit that hatred cannot extinguish.
My thoughts are with Sydney tonight — with the Jewish community mourning loved ones, with every family waiting for news of someone dear, and with all those who have ever felt the warmth of that golden horizon. May their pain be met with a rejection of Islamic fundamentalism by those in power. Their suffering cannot be ignored yet again with empty words about “unity”.
Tonight, as in Hanukkah’s ancient light, we must believe in the triumph of light over darkness — even when darkness seems to keep winning.