The pain and anger have all but gone, but like many of you I still feel the deep sadness caused by the massacre of 15 innocent people at Bondi on December 14.
On that day our family met at Cronulla RSL for a Christmas lunch, and we left feeling we were so lucky to have emigrated to the best country in the world.
The next morning, like most fair minded Australians, we felt our world had been turned upside down.
During a video call with my brother, I saw a side of him that I have never seen before.
His anger about Bondi was palpable, and what he told me should happen to anyone found guilty cannot be repeated.
But I am sure you can imagine what sort of punishment he had in mind at that moment, a little over 12 hours after those 15 people, including a 10 year old girl called Matilda were gunned down in cold blood.
At Bondi.
The place where just about every Sydneysider has visited at least once.
My brother and I shared beautiful memories as two young Greek boys visiting Bondi to try our hand at surfing or just lie on the grass and enjoy some fish and chips wrapped in newspaper.
Those memories have now been obliterated, and the same would apply to millions of our fellow citizens from Sydney and across the country.
And why?
Well, because of a conflict in the Middle East, almost 20,000 km away.
It doesn’t matter how they try to spin it, those poor Jewish people celebrating their faith as part of the first day of Chanukah had nothing to do with Gaza and other parts of the Middle East.
It was bad enough our city streets have been clogged up by dubious protest marches for more than two years, leading up to the atrocity on December 14.
But make no mistake about it, what happened at Bondi was an attack on all Aussies, me, you, every single one of us.
That’s why the Prime Minister’s response was so disappointing – or to use the Aussie vernacular, it was as weak as piss.
This was Anthony Albanese’s Ich bin ein Berliner moment and for whatever reason he failed to grasp it.
US president John F Kennedy (JFK) uttered the words Ich bin ein Berliner in 1963 when he visited Berlin to see for himself the wall the communists had built to divide the city into two.
Saying “I am a Berliner’’ in German was JFK’s way of showing genuine empathy with the people of Berlin.
Albanese’s first words on learning of the terrorist attack should have been: “I am a Jew today. We are all Jews today’’.
In that moment he was the father of the nation, and he needed to make us feel a little better, to reassure us he would do everything in his power to keep all of us safe.
That was it, he had one job, and I am sorry to say he failed.
With Christmas around the corner, all we can do now is pray to God that Bondi never happens again.
I totally agree with everything you say in your article about the Bondi massacre. It is a disgrace that anything like that could happen in this country, let alone Sydney, although the warnings have been there for all to see if not blind to it.
Premier Minns has bent over backwards to do as much as he can within the law to get to the bottom of the anti-Semitism that has swept NSW while the PM is hiding under weasel words that mean not much at all.
He has to take responsibility for it because his government has allowed people to migrate here who do not want to integrate into the community even though they pledge that they will and whose long held hatred of Jews festers until something like this and the other recent attacks happen.
Over the years the PM and Tony Burke in particular have taken resource money from ASIO, its operatives and those working on immigration, allowing security to weaken surveillance, checking etc.
A Royal Commission would flush this out, which the PM doesn’t want.
Some say that this has happened due to Netanyahu’s stance against Hamas in Gaza, but that is a furphy, it is all about activists spreading hatred and encouraging hatred towards Jewish people.
Neo-Nazis are not helping with their disgusting rhetoric stirring things up.
Premier Minns is right to ban all these marches with the flying of the national flags of other countries, a disgrace in itself, and disgustingly phrased placards encouraging hatred and even death to Jews, generally a naturally peaceful people.
Australia is beginning to look like a different country, not the country I emigrated to in 1967 from the UK.
I’m not surprised many people are talking about leaving here although where they would go is questionable with the state of the world at the moment.
I wish peace and safety for Jewish communities in Australia and join in their sorrow at this dreadful event.