SYDNEY — Government authorities have not done enough to stamp out hatred of Jews in Australia, allowing it to fester in the aftermath of the Hamas onslaught of October 7, 2023, according to the daughter of a Holocaust survivor who was wounded at the Bondi Beach terror shooting on Sunday.

Victoria Teplitsky, 53, a retired childcare center owner, said that the father and son who went on a 10-minute shooting spree that killed 15 people at a Hanukkah event had been “taught to hate,” which was a bigger factor in the attack than access to guns.

“It’s not the fact that those two people had a gun. It’s the fact that hatred has been allowed to fester against the Jewish minority in Australia,” she told Reuters in an interview.

“We are angry at our government because it comes from the top, and they should have stood up for our community with strength. And they should have squashed the hatred rather than kind of letting it slide,” she said. “We’ve been ignored. We feel like — are we not Australian enough? Do we not matter to our government?”

Antisemitic incidents have been rising in Australia since Hamas launched its October 7 massacre in southern Israel, which sparked the two-year war in Gaza. A rise in such incidents over the past 16 months prompted the head of the nation’s main intelligence agency to declare that antisemitism was his top priority in terms of threat. Authorities have called Sunday’s shooting an antisemitic terrorist attack.

“This was not a surprise to the Jewish community. We........

© The Times of Israel