Australia’s Jewish community was shocked recently by an unprovoked attack on a Jewish family group of five in Bondi Beach, Australia.
This poster of Menachem Mendel Schneerson at a Chabad house in Bondi Beach promises that the Messiah is on His way. Many Chabad Chasidim believe that Schneerson is the Messiah. He died in 1994.
Although Australia has a reputation as a tolerant country, eight men shouting anti-Semitics epithets viciously attacked four men and a 62-year-old woman as they walked home from a Shabbat (Sabbath) evening meal.
“Who would have believed something like that could happen in Australia,” Australia’s Jewish National Fund (JNF) executive director, Ygal Shapir said.
The intensity of the attack resulted in severe injuries, including bleeding to the brain, a fractured skull, facial fractures, a broken nose, cuts, and bruising. Closed cable footage showed the victims bleeding profusely from their heads and faces.
“They started to curse us, calling us ‘Dirty Jews,’ and then just started hitting us. Within seconds I’d been punched in the face,” said, Shlomo Ben Haim, a Jewish National Fund (JNF) emissary. “For 15 or 20 minutes they didn’t stop hitting us.” (JPost)
The situation would have been worse, but security guards from a nearby hotel ran to the scene to intervene.
A suburb of Sydney, Bondi Beach is considered very multicultural and has a number of synagogues. According to the 2011 census, 8% of the population in Bondi Beach is Jewish.
