That moment arrives without warning. You wake up on a Sunday morning, check your phone, and are confronted by a photograph of someone you know, drenched in blood. His head, his face, his T-shirt—all covered in it.
The Moment of Confrontation
He lies on the grass, with cars and fluttering banners in the background. The accompanying social media post from BNO News Live is stark: “Human rights lawyer Arsen Ostrovsky shared a photo of himself after being shot at Bondi Beach in Sydney. He survived”. The lack of a period after “survived” suggests an interrupted thought. Soon, the horrifying details fill your screen: a father and son, identified as Muslim, went on a killing spree at the famous Australian beach, deliberately hunting for Jewish people.
Arsen Ostrovsky was at Bondi Beach with his family to celebrate the first night of Hanukkah, the Jewish festival marking the triumph of light over darkness. Now, he was staring back from a phone screen, wounded by a bullet to the head. That is the moment the lens swings back onto you. How do you react?
A Global Tsunami of Hatred
For many, the response is a scroll past the tragedy, moving on to weather reports and sports scores, perhaps forgetting about Ostrovsky and the 15 people slaughtered, including a rabbi, a Holocaust survivor, and children. For commentator Warren Kinsella, who knows Ostrovsky personally, the image was inescapable. He describes the lawyer as a smart, thoughtful man who moved from Ukraine to Australia as a child to escape antisemitism.
Kinsella draws a direct line from the Hamas attacks of October 7, 2023—which saw 1,200 Israelis killed and hundreds kidnapped—to the current climate. Instead of sparking widespread sympathy for Jewish victims, that day marked the beginning of a global surge in violence and discrimination against Jews. The Bondi Beach attack was swiftly followed by incidents in Canada, including a masked mob screaming about Jews at a Montreal Christmas festival and a man mocking photos of Jewish children outside a school.
The Imperative to Speak Up
Kinsella argues that in the face of such hatred, indifference is no longer an option. He points to heroes like Ahmed al-Ahmed, a non-Jewish fruit shop owner who tackled and disarmed one of the Bondi killers, as an example of decisive action.
In a conversation months before he was shot, Ostrovsky himself spoke about these critical moments. “It’s more of a duty and obligation,” he said. “For those that do believe in these values that we hold dear… Speak up. I think it’s imperative that our friends and allies in Canada and the non-Jewish community, those in government, do so as well. We have no choice. We don’t have the luxury to stay silent.”
The article concludes that we are at a decisive moment. The choice is to do nothing, allowing the hatred to continue, or to speak up and fight back. The decision, Kinsella states, is ours to make.
