Statement to our Bondi family and friends

My Palestinian father arrived in Australia in 1948 and set up a new life running a delicatessen in Bondi Beach. It was there he met my Australian-born mother – a Bondi local whose father played professional football and worked for the post office.

Two vastly different worlds came together in a union that was highly unlikely. But it grew and survived based on strong shared values and respect for historical differences.

That’s why our business is called Bondi Partners. We come together from around the world to build a better future.

Like all of us, my father would have grieved the senseless slaughter of our Jewish sisters and brothers on Bondi Beach. Despite all that was happening in Jerusalem in 1947, he wanted everyone to live harmoniously together despite their differences. He was an emotional man, and I can feel him now, sharing our collective grief with silence and tears.

My mum was a local Bondi Beach model, and she would have been stunned and bewildered by this heinous event. As a child, she was evacuated from Bondi after a Japanese torpedo ran ashore on the beach in 1942. She was ten years old.

Dad despised the thought that people would bring their birth country differences to our shores. He spoke Arabic and Hebrew and counted Jews, Muslims, and many others with cultural and religious differences as his close friends. He taught us to be understanding and tolerant. But also, he and Mum taught us to be tough with intolerance and to fight against prejudice and ignorance.

Bondi is a magic place where people from around the world come together to celebrate the very best of life. Young people, in particular, bring energy, joy, and unbridled hope for a better future to the beach, its surrounds, and our community.

Despite the best endeavours of two terrorists, that will not change. The community will come together. It will rightly mourn the deaths, but it will rebuild and be stronger. Justice will prevail.

As each hour passes, we are learning more about the perpetrators. They were a father and son. It appears the son was under surveillance from our intelligence agencies. It appears the father was a licensed gun owner with permission to own six guns.

Australia has not had a mass shooting this deadly since March of 1996. We have never had a large-scale terrorist event on Australian soil.

However, as a nation, we have lost citizens to terrorism in Bali, Ukraine, New York, and many other places around the world.

Our country sometimes wishes it could divorce itself from the worst of the world. We are a long way from the battles in the Middle East, but from 1914 onwards, we have never been afraid to step up to defend our values against bullies, thugs, and evil state actors. We have always defended freedom.

On our shores, the freedom of the Jewish community to safely celebrate their faith is no different from the right of Muslims to go to prayer at the mosque or Christians to celebrate Christmas later this month.

This was an attack on everything we believe in and all of us will grieve with the Jewish community. They were Australian families celebrating their faith in a traditional Australian way. Hatred fueled by anti-Semitism must be crushed because it’s the same hatred that fuels all acts of evil.

For those that have been impacted, our love, support, and grief are without any limits.

Joe Hockey
President, Bondi Partners