Commentary
Bondi Beach shooting: What it says about the terror threat moving forward
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The attackers’ anti-Semitic motives and suspected influence by ISIS ideology have renewed concerns about terrorist violence.
PHOTO: AFP
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As many look forward to celebrating the year-end holiday, the festive season also brings with it a heightened terrorism threat. The Dec 14 mass shooting at Bondi Beach
The two gunmen killed at least 15 and injured dozens
The attackers’ anti-Semitic motives and suspected influence by ISIS ideology
The onset of the Israel-Hamas conflict in October 2022 generated a wave of radicalisation cases globally, Singapore included.
A key security concern for counter-terrorism authorities worldwide has been the impact of the Gaza war on their domestic security – specifically, whether it would spawn large-scale terrorist violence and intercommunal tensions.
The Anti-Defamation League (ADL), a New York-based civil rights organisation, found that anti-Semitic incidents in the US reached an all-time high in 2024. ADL and other entities that track anti-Semitic incidents reported a significant increase in such acts, with Australia among the worst affected, with a threefold increase in such incidents compared with the pre-October 2022 period.
Over the past few years, Western governments have had to walk a tightrope between pro-Palestinian movements and protests, and Jewish groups that perceived their agitations as an existential threat.
Recent progress in the Gaza peace plan – made possible after considerable pressure from US President Donald Trump on the Israeli government and Hamas – gave a glimmer of hope that anti-Semitic and other forms of terrorist violence inspired by the conflict would be tempered.
Not only has the Bondi attack highlighted the fragility of such optimism, but it has also sparked fears of a violent backlash against Muslims.
Along with anti-Semitism, Islamophobic incidents have also been on the rise in Australia and other countries in the West. A 2024 knife attack at an Assyrian church in Sydney, which the authorities classified as a terrorist act, led to bomb threats against mosques and anti-Muslim rhetoric.
Since the Dec 14 shooting, Israel’s supporters have now accused the Australian government of permitting pro-Palestinian expressions and turning a blind eye towards growing anti-Semitism in the country. The Israeli Prime Minister went as far as to attribute Australia’s recognition of Palestine as a cause for the attack.
Despite the controversy stirred by such accusations, the Bondi Beach massacre suggests the conflict continues to motivate acts of terror. As some experts have noted, the shooting could even inspire copycat attacks.
India has since heightened its security in parts of the country, acting on intelligence suggesting major terror plots against Jewish sites there. Across Europe, security has been tightened in anticipation of similar terror attacks during the holiday season.
The gunmen’s ISIS link presents another major concern for the counter-terrorism community and has rekindled concerns over the persistence of the militant organisation’s threat to the region, with a few South-east Asian countries, including Singapore, enhancing security deployments.
To demonstrate that they were carrying out the attack on the terror group’s behalf, the shooters carried two ISIS flags, one of which they prominently displayed on a car’s windscreen before they started their rampage.
A month earlier, both had travelled to Mindanao in south Philippines – a region with a long history of Islamist and separatist violence.
The Philippines’ south is the closest region to Australia where ISIS affiliates had a notable presence and is a destination for would-be jihadists to scout for collaborators.
Southern Philippines, in particular the Marawi region, became a battleground in 2017 when ISIS-affiliated militants tried to establish a governorate there modelled after the “caliphate” ISIS had proclaimed in Iraq and Syria around that period.
Some counter-terrorism experts say it is conceivable that the duo travelled there in preparation for their attack, although the Philippine authorities rejected allegations that the two gunmen received military training there.
Establishing what the gunmen did while in south Philippines was difficult in the days after the attack, which points to blind spots in intelligence gathering and the possibility of collaborators who might still not be on the radar of security agencies.
The incident has also sparked scrutiny over missed opportunities to prevent the attack.
The younger gunman, Naveed Akram, was not coy about his sympathies for ISIS. He appeared in a few videos in 2019 engaging in intense proselytising activities in Sydney.
He was investigated by Australia’s domestic intelligence agency that same year over connections to a Sydney-based ISIS cell. But while some of his associates were apprehended by the Australian authorities in the past few years and are serving prison sentences, he was deemed not to be a threat.
With their increasing case loads and limited resources, intelligence and law enforcement agencies around the world struggle to manage borderline cases – the individuals who exhibit radicalisation tendencies but do not meet the threshold for resource-intense monitoring.
The Bondi shooting underscores the sobering reality that attacks by lone actors who leave little or no warning are nearly impossible to prevent.
Since the attack, prominent politicians in Australia have indicated their support across party lines for tightening gun ownership laws.
“I’m determined to bring in the toughest gun laws in Australia and they’ll be significantly tightened in New South Wales,” Mr Chris Minns, the Premier of New South Wales, where Bondi Beach is located, told reporters in the aftermath of the Dec 14 attack.
But with right-wing groups opposing gun reform, it remains to be seen if early momentum on gun reform will hold.
While communities try to heal from this tragedy, the political fallout from violent tragedies such as Bondi’s – leading to drawn-out debates on gun control laws and limits of free speech – can exact social costs.
More fundamentally, the shooting serves as a reminder that today’s terror threat is no longer shaped by organised networks alone, but made more unpredictable by the convergence of global grievances, resilient extremist ideologies and lone actors hiding in plain sight.
