Subhead:Avi Yemini asked a simple question about the terror attack at Australia’s iconic Bondi Beach … and watched it be carefully avoided.#
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The most striking thing I witnessed at Bondi Beach yesterday wasn’t what Sussan Ley said … it was what she refused to say. Faced with a massacre that has left the Jewish community terrified, the opposition leader would acknowledge antisemitism, shied away when pushed to name the ideology driving it. Islamic jihadism remained the unspoken elephant in the room.
I tried repeatedly to ask Ley a straightforward question. Was she prepared to resist the media’s push to turn this into a gun control debate and instead confront the real threat? Each time, her staff stepped in. I wasn’t aggressive. I wasn’t heckling. I was deliberately respectful. Still, I was blocked.
I caught up with Sydney rabbi Mendy Berger less than 24 hours after the Bondi Beach terror attack that left his family, friends and community shattered.
What he told me was raw, confronting and impossible to ignore.
👉 https://t.co/Z5GvPbQWps pic.twitter.com/gQeJt276BZ
— Avi Yemini (@OzraeliAvi) December 16, 2025
When I finally got my chance, I put it plainly. There was, I said, “a concerted effort to make this about a gun issue,” and concern from the community that this was a way to “distract and avoid talking about the elephant in the room.” Ley responded, “We will examine any recommendations about guns exactly as we should in a sensible proportionate way but that is not what this is about. This has been about hideous antisemitism.”
