The federal Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion convened its first public hearings in Sydney on Monday, nearly five months after an Islamist-inspired father-and-son team killed fifteen people at a Hanukkah celebration on Bondi Beach. Retired High Court judge Virginia Bell, appointed as commissioner, opened the proceedings by observing that the sharp spike in antisemitism Australia has experienced is mirrored across other Western nations and appears “clearly linked to events in the Middle East”. She warned that such global developments can rapidly trigger ugly displays of hostility toward Jewish Australians “simply because they are Jews”. The commission, the highest form of government inquiry in the country, was established to examine the factors that led to the December 14 massacre and the broader erosion of social cohesion.

Sheina Gutnick, whose father Reuven Morrison was killed after he threw bricks at the gunmen, became the first witness. She told the commission that the Hamas attack on Israel on October 7, 2023, marked a profound shift: from that point, she said, antisemitism “was being allowed to come into the open” in a way that felt socially and morally acceptable. Gutnick recalled an incident a year before the Bondi shooting, when a man at Westfield Bondi Junction pointed at her Star of David necklace and called her a “fucking terrorist”. No one intervened. The hearing also heard of children abusing Jewish classmates—one small student reportedly told a Jewish peer that Hitler should have gassed them all—underscoring how deeply the hatred has permeated daily life.

Viewed from London, analysts note that Australia’s experience mirrors surges in Britain and Europe, where anti-Jewish incidents also spiked after October 7. From Washington, observers see the royal commission as a test of whether a liberal democracy can confront home-grown extremism without inflaming communal tensions. The inquiry’s first block of hearings will focus on defining antisemitism and mapping its historical and contemporary manifestations, including the role of online radicalisation and imported Middle East conflicts. Commissioner Bell has stressed the need to understand how quickly foreign events can turn into local violence, a theme echoed by survivors and by Peter Halasz, a Holocaust survivor and co-founder of a iconic swimwear brand, who testified to the long shadow of historical prejudice.

As the commission adjourned until Tuesday, its forward trajectory remains crucial. Beyond the immediate search for accountability, the inquiry is expected to recommend measures to strengthen social cohesion, from education curricula to policing strategies. For Gutnick, the hope is that the commission can restore the sense of safety that Bondi once represented—a place where her parents met and where she spent carefree summers. The task ahead is to ensure that the hate that shattered that memory does not become entrenched in Australian society at large.