Thank you Mr Speaker, I move that this House: Mourns for the innocent lives lost during the terrorist attack targeting the Jewish community at Bondi Beach on Sunday, 14, December 2025, and extends the deepest sympathies of members of this house to the family, friends and loved ones of the victims.
Conveys its utmost gratitude for the bravery shown by those who risked their lives in aiding the victims, including members of local Surf Life Saving clubs, front line responders such as the New South Wales Police, New South Wales ambulance, community groups such as the CSG Community Safety Group and members of the public.
Recognise the devastating impact this attack has had on the Jewish community in our state and our country.
Acknowledges the evil of antisemitism and violent Islamist extremism, and that words of hate can lead to actions of hatred with devastating consequences.
Rejects antisemitism unequivocally and hatred and intolerance in all its forms, and recognises that we have no place in our modern multicultural community for this behaviour.
Resolves to lead in the eradication of antisemitism in whatever form it appears, and commits to do all we can now to hasten the elimination of this hatred in our state, for Jewish communities today and across the generations to come.
And stands in solidarity with our state’s Jewish community and commits to supporting them through this process of healing.
Mr. Speaker, each night of Chanukah after the lighting of the Ma’oz Tzur candles, the Jewish people sing the Ma’oz Tzur, “My soul was sated with misery and my strength was spent with grief.”
Today, at the end of Chanukah, we’ve returned to this house of parliament to acknowledge in one unanimous voice that we too are spent with grief.
After an hour of terror and a week of sorrow, this morning, we remember 15 beautiful souls.
On Sunday, the 14th of December, victims of violent Jewish hate, but in the course of their lives, wonderful, generous, big hearted members of our community.
And it’s in that spirit that we mourn their death today, not by the evil that found them, but by the lives that they lived, the love that they gave, the good that they shared with us and the rest of the world.
Mr. Speaker, eight days ago, Sofia and Boris Gurman saw a black ISIS flag on the windscreen parked along Campbell parade at Bondi. Now they could have easily edged away, having seen the flag and put themselves in a position of safety.
They were walking away from the Chanukah festival. But they didn’t do that. And instead, and despite the obvious danger, they tried to, without being armed themselves, disarm the gunman, and in the struggle, they became the first victims of this terrible crime.
With my wife, Anna, we met their sole surviving son, Alex last week, who spoke of his deep sense of gratitude that the footage of their final moments was in fact, found so that he knew that they died heroes.
The family had said this act of bravery and selflessness reflects exactly who they were, people who instinctively chose to help, even at great personal risk. While nothing can lessen the pain of this loss, we feel immense pride in their courage and humanity.
On Friday morning, age 61 and 69 Sofia and Boris were buried together, and they were buried as husband and wife, according to the rabbi, Rabbi Ulman, it’s been years since he’d seen two coffins placed next to one another at a funeral.
Mr. Speaker, no one could fail to observe the courage and humanity displayed at Bondi Beach, often by grandfathers and grandmothers hopelessly outgunned, placed in an impossible situation.
But the more we’ve learned about these 15 people, the more we’ve come to understand the source of that bravery, the reason that they were going to stand in the breach and to protect people in their community and other strangers that they’d never met.
Because one of the many traits that’s united these people is that they were all active citizens. They were community people. They gave themselves to others.
People like Edith Brutman, a cherished leader in their committee against anti-discrimination. In the words of her loved ones, she met prejudice with principle, division, she met with service.
We mourn her deeply, but we ask that her life, not the senseless violence that took it, be what endures when we remember Edith.
We remember young Matilda painting her face at sunset, petting a baby lamb with her sister. She was called a ray of light to everyone who’d met her.
We remember Boris Tetleroyd, a gentleman and a musician who loved conversation, connection and helping others whenever he could find them.
We remember Marika Pogany, who was given the New South Wales Mensch award for hand delivering, get this, 12,000 kosher Meals on Wheels over, get this – 20 years of service to the community!
And I ask you, what kind of malevolence could motivate a person to murder, an 82-year-old Meals on Wheels volunteer, an elderly lady who loved her community and was looking for nothing but peace, the peace to celebrate her religion.
Mr. Speaker, we remember Tibor Weitzen, killed while shielding other people from gunfire, a kind and generous man in life, and we can say this now because we know it a hero in death.
So too, Reuven Morrison, who was seen running towards the gunman with a brick, nothing but a brick, against a whole bunch of guns hoping to protect his people.
As his daughter said, “If there was one way for him to go on this earth, if we had to let him go, it would be fighting a terrorist. There’s no other way. He could have been taken from us. He went down fighting, protecting the people that he loved most.”
He went down fighting.
Today, we remember Alex Kleytman, 87 years old, who survived the Holocaust in Europe before moving to Australia. He loved this country. He cherished the Australian way of life. He believed in freedom. He believed in democracy. He believed in its people. He believed in all of it, everything about Australia.
Because it’s not what he saw in Europe, the place where he left.
And it’s also beyond heartbreaking that he was killed after a long and often perilous life on the soil that he loved in the country that he called home, on a beach that he thought was safe.
Mr. Speaker, we remember Peter Meagher, a former cop, decades of service, decades of service, to the people of this state, then a local photographer and a legend at the Galloping Greens Randwick Rugby club.
And one of five boys. One of five boys. It seems as though the Meagher family knew pretty much every single person in the Maroubra Eastern Suburbs period, and went to Marcellin Randwick, an amazing family. They’re going to miss their big brother.
Adam Smyth, a sports lover, a father of four, forever irreplaceable to his wife and to his children.
Dan Elkayam, he was a French national who crossed the world for a better life in Australia, a life he had found before he was killed on Sunday at the age of just 27 years old. 27.
Tania Tretiak of Randwick attending Chanukah, with her family by the beach. She died at 68 years of age.
I know when you go through the lives that have been lost, the significant contributions that they’ve made to this state, the love that they put out in our community, that it’s very hard to divine any positive feelings that have come out of Sunday’s event.
It leaves you flat. It leaves you worried. For many in our community, it leaves them fearful.
But we can and we must, look at some of the uplifting parts of the last week by witnessing the strength and the grace of the Jewish community.
In some cases, it’s best exemplified by the rabbis of that community and of our city, our rabbis as well.
Not only have they been working to honour the dead, comfort the families, organise the burial of loved ones, they’ve also had to say goodbye to two of their own, Rabbi Yaakov Levitan and Rabbi Eli Schlanger.
Both were killed while performing religious duties in Bondi, the kind of service they routinely performed for the people of New South Wales.
Rabbi Eli Schlanger was a Corrections New South Wales pastor in our prisons, and the stories outside his funeral of him traveling hours and hours and hours to see inmates in far flung areas of the state and then working incredibly hard to see them released into his care, often into his personal care.
We’ve lost someone with a huge heart and deep empathy for people who are in a difficult, difficult time.
They were known by many. They were loved by many, including by other members of that rabbinical family, particularly Eli Feldman, who was a close friend of Rabbi Schlanger.
They were the two Elis. They studied together as young men, they both become rabbis, and Schlanger was like a brother to Feldman.
If Eli Feldman had responded to the murder of his friend with spite or even hatred, I think we probably all understand, in fact, that’s what many people are feeling today at the loss of so many wonderful people in our community in Australia.
But instead, that didn’t happen. On television, front of a large group of people, in front of everybody, he said, no matter the colour of your skin or what you believe, we are all created in God’s image.
Let us love each other. Let us care about each other.
As Australians, our instinct is to look after each other, to stand by your mate and not leave anyone behind. And when that instinct is tested, it reveals itself not in speeches or in Acts of Parliament, but often in brave, always selfless acts, sometimes spontaneous, but always courageous.
We’ve seen it from life savers running towards the danger in bare feet. I know an off-duty cop jumped out of the breakers at Bondi, made sure his two children were okay, then jumped the fence to help people in the line of fire.
We’ve seen it life savers running down Campbell Parade from the neighbouring surf club after they heard gunshots at Tamarama, running towards the gunfire.
We’ve seen it from members of the New South Wales Police, including two who were in a critical care after being shot in the front, running towards the violence.
And we’ve seen it in acts of quiet charity, in blood bank donations, private donations, and in urgent life and death acts of professional care.
And we should also mention the doctors, the nurses, we’ve said, the paramedics, those that work in our big public hospitals, who, at the drop of a hat, ran into work to receive the injured, the wounded and the dead at our big public hospitals.
They were absolutely incredible. I’ve spoken to the local health manager at all of those big hospitals. Not one call had to be made to any of the senior surgeons, they were there almost immediately, having seen the news on television, knowing there’d be a mass casualty count.
I mean, that is true public service, that’s commitment to the people of this state.
Mr. Speaker, there are no adequate words that deal with the devastation that we’ve experienced this week. But as Rabbi Wolff of Central Synagogue told me this week, “This is why many turn to Scripture, and that’s why we’ve got a book.”
And it’s written in Scripture, “It’s not your duty to complete the work, and neither are you free to desist from it.”
In the term of this Parliament, it not, it might not be in all of our power to eradicate the poison of antisemitism, it’s hard to take the hate out of somebody’s heart, but that doesn’t mean we don’t have a duty to do everything we possibly can to fight hatred in our community, wherever and whenever we see it.
This includes organisations and individuals who promote violence, who divide our community.
It’s got to be confronted, and that’s why we’re all here this week, three days before Christmas, to begin that task, I urge and put the emphasis on begin that task.
This isn’t the end of the changes that we need to make to keep the people of New South Wales safe.
I have to say, Mr. Speaker, I bear a deep responsibility for that as Premier, we must, we must make those changes.
We don’t have all the answers for the many questions that people are asking, but I do know that Australians are repulsed by what they saw two Sundays ago.
We are kind, tolerant, loving people, and yes, we’ve got every reason to despair right now, but Australia has been a land of hope, not least for the Jewish migrants who found a home and a sanctuary here for decades.
80 years ago, one of the one of those migrants who found the sanctuary in our country, walked off a boat in Sydney Harbor having survived the Holocaust of Europe, he was a Jewish immigrant to our country.
On the next day so his second day in Australia, he recorded in his personal diary, quote, “It’s a very peculiar feeling. You if you were born here, or you’ve been living here for many years, you probably don’t understand the feeling. Though it is midnight, though it’s just our second day in Sydney, we seem to be home. Already, we start to have this have the same sense of security as Australian citizens. There’s no difference between the two of us. We’re beginning to share their confidence in their fellow citizens and in their country.”
Mr. Speaker. I know I speak for all members of this Parliament, all members of this Parliament, when I say to the Jewish people of this state, this is your home. This has always been your home, and we must do everything we possibly can to ensure that you are safe and you are protected in this city.
